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Oral Answers to Questions
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
1. How many prisoners who have completed their tariff remain in prison for the purpose of public protection.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
On 17 November 2010, 14,680 prisoners were serving an indeterminate sentence of imprisonment for public protection, or a life sentence in prisons or secure hospitals. Of those, 6,320 are held beyond their tariff expiry date, excluding offenders who have been recalled to custody following release.
John Mann
Those prisoners have been held in prison for good reasons and on good judgment. Does the Secretary of State intend, as is rumoured throughout prisons, to reduce the number of such offenders in prison? If so, how many sex offenders and violent criminals will be released back into our communities?
Mr Clarke
That rumour is probably on the hon. Gentleman’s website where I have seen that he is telling his constituents that I will release robbers, burglars, drug dealers and so on. Perhaps he will wait for the sentencing review, and stop living in a fantasy world. The indeterminate prison sentence has never worked as intended. The intention was that it would apply to a few hundred dangerous people who were not serving life sentences. The number is piling up, and more than 6,000 have gone beyond their tariff, but they will not simply be released. We will re-address the subject, and we will not release all the people he keeps telling his constituents we will release.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State look at the Prison Reform Trust’s report and specifically conduct a review of the social and financial costs and benefits of IPP sentences, and examine the available policy options set out by the trust?
Mr Clarke
We are taking a balanced look at the whole subject. The Prison Reform Trust takes quite the opposite view to that of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It believes that those sentences should be scrapped entirely. It is critical of the way they work, and it is clear that they are not working as intended, but the Government are hoping to take a balanced view. We must obviously protect the public against dangerous people and the risk of serious offences being committed on release. On the other hand, about 10% of the entire prison population will be serving IPP sentences by 2015 at the present rate of progress, and we cannot keep piling up an ever-mounting number of people who are likely never to be released.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that it is inherent in both life sentences and the concept of IPP sentences, which are widely supported throughout the Chamber, that many prisoners will be tariff-expired because the idea is that they are not released until it is judged that it is safe to do so? Does he also accept that although it is true that the precise construction of the clauses was inappropriate and led to some very short tariffs, since the changes that I introduced in 2008, the number of new IPP sentenced prisoners has dropped by 50% from about 1,500 to under 1,000 a year? Would it not be far better for public safety to let that work through instead of prematurely releasing such prisoners?
Mr Clarke
No, it has always been the case that some people are held indeterminately, and certainly those on life sentences. The purpose of IPP sentences was to have a sentence below a life sentence for dangerous people for whom life was not quite justified. The right hon. Gentleman will accept that such sentences never worked as intended, which is why, when he was Secretary of State, he introduced an Act of Parliament to try to correct some of the mistakes that had been made. We are now considering how the sentence works in practice, and we will introduce considered proposals in due course.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
2. What proposals he is considering to increase the level of efficiency in the administration of justice.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
Following the spending review, the Ministry of Justice must make a total budgetary saving, including resource and capital spending, of 25% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2014-15.
Guy Opperman
I remind the House of my former profession of barrister. Eleven years ago, the Labour Government introduced the Woolf reforms, which changed all manner of process in the civil courts. What detailed proposals does the Minister have for the same telephone case management in criminal work, particularly post-not guilty pleas, and after-guilty pleas and sending matters for pre-sentence report?
Nick Herbert
We are certainly interested in improving the efficiency of justice by looking at case management, and some encouraging pilots have been run in London, in which costs have been saved through integrated case management arrangements between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. We are also very interested in employing the greater use of technology, such as virtual courts, and I would be very happy to talk to my hon. Friend about other ideas as well.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
In the name of so-called efficiency of justice, the Secretary of State has scrapped the post of chief coroner, a move widely condemned by organisations such as Inquest and the Royal British Legion. They point out that tens of thousands of people every year are forced to grapple with the archaic, unaccountable coroners system, which needs the reforms promised by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The Minister said that scrapping the chief coroner was necessary to save money, but what assessment has he made of the increased costs that will be incurred through the greater use of judicial review, which is bound to result from this short-sighted decision? May I invite the Secretary of State or his Minister to put on record now exactly what the real cost will be of that false efficiency? Or will he take this opportunity to reverse that misguided proposal?
Nick Herbert
We do not think that this was a sustainable proposal, with set-up costs of £10 million and running costs of £6 million a year. The important thing now is to reform the coroners system appropriately to ensure the efficient administration of justice in this area.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
What steps are Ministers taking to ensure that savings do not simply become higher costs for other Departments or other parts of their own Department, whether in the context of magistrates court closures, which adds to police costs, or changes in the legal aid system that generate demand for expenditure elsewhere? Is there a mechanism for assessing how costs will fall elsewhere?
Nick Herbert
I agree with my right hon. Friend about the importance of ensuring that what he describes does not happen, but he will know that there is significant under-utilisation of magistrates courts. That is why we have had to take this action in consulting about closure, not least in relation to the Tynedale magistrates court, which is adjacent to his constituency in Northumberland and which is operating at a utilisation rate of only about two thirds.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
3. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the support given by the National Offender Management Service to children in young offender institutions who have been in care.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
The National Offender Management Service has a responsibility to safeguard the welfare of all young people in custody, and all young offender institutions are regularly inspected by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons. Revised guidance on the responsibilities of local authorities to support young people leaving care is due to be published shortly by the Department for Education. It will include a chapter dedicated to the responsibilities for supporting care leavers involved in the criminal justice system.
Luciana Berger
I thank the Minister for that reply. I recently met representatives of the Liverpool Children in Care Council and heard young people expressing concern about the level of support given to young offenders who are looked-after children. Typically, they do not have the same support networks that other young offenders have. Will the Minister now commit to revisiting this issue to ensure that vulnerable young offenders are given the help and support that they need to get their lives back on track?
Nick Herbert
I certainly agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of providing such support. Last week, I visited Feltham young offenders institution with the Mayor of London and saw how innovative arrangements to provide greater support and counselling for young people had a considerably reduced the recidivism rate on a particular wing in that institution. That shows that, with better rehabilitation, we can get better results. I would be very happy to talk to the hon. Lady about any specific ideas she might have for improving the system.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Is it any wonder that children in care do not have the necessary continuity of support once they are in custody, given that the full financial responsibility of local authorities is lost at that point? Will the Government ensure that when such children in care are in custody, they are not out of sight, out of mind and off the financial books of the local authorities?
Nick Herbert
It is important to ensure that the incentives are right, that we deter the inappropriate use of custody for young people and that local authorities are fully focused on what they need to do to reduce recidivism before the use of custody becomes important.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that, according to a written ministerial statement today, the Omand review of the case of Jon Venables was released this morning. It is 114 pages long. Is he also aware that my constituent, Ralph Bulger, the father of James Bulger, and his brother Jimmy Bulger knew nothing about the release of this report today until the media contacted them, asking for a statement on what they thought would be in this 114-page document? Can he ensure that this kind of thing does not happen again?
Nick Herbert
My understanding is that appropriate arrangements should have been made, and that Mr Bulger was aware of the report but not its release. I shall of course look into the matter, and I am happy to talk to the right hon. Gentleman about what went wrong, if something went wrong in this case.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
5. What recent progress he has made on reviewing his Department’s policy on unduly lenient sentences.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
The powers of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General to refer certain Crown court sentences to the Court of Appeal on the grounds of undue leniency are working well.
Sarah Newton
I am particularly concerned with the sentencing of people convicted of paedophilia and believe that the policy review should be based on evidence. What assurance can the Minister provide that data that the Ministry of Justice collects will separate crimes of paedophilia from all sexual offences as currently recorded? Without that data it will be difficult to review the appropriateness or otherwise of current sentencing policy.
Mr Blunt
I can well understand my hon. Friend’s concern. All offences of sufficient seriousness to be tried only in the Crown court can be referred through the unduly lenient sentences process to the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General; and 17 of the 31 offences that are triable either way and listed in statutory instrument 2006/1116 refer to offences against children, which reflects how seriously the House takes the matter.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. You will be aware that on three occasions over the past two weeks the Secretary of State for Justice and the Deputy Prime Minister’s deputy—the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—have come to the Chamber and essentially repeated from the Dispatch Box announcements already made in the media.
I want to ask the Minister about reports in this Sunday’s papers on the Department’s sentencing plans. The current Prime Minister in March, the Conservative party manifesto in April and the Secretary of State in June all said words to the effect: “We will introduce a system where the courts will specify minimum and maximum sentences for certain offenders. These prisoners will only be able to leave jail after their minimum sentence is served by having earned their release, not simply by right.” Will the sentencing review ditch that policy or keep it?
Sadiq Khan
It is outrageous that we have to buy The Times and read The Daily Telegraph to see what the Government are planning. That is not new politics, that is not the way to do things, and the Secretary of State, who has been an MP for 40 years and served in three Cabinets, should know better.
The Minister ducked the previous question, but he and, indeed, the Secretary of State know that knife-crime cases cause real and lasting misery to the victims, to bereaved families and to communities. Before the general election and in their manifesto, the Conservatives were quite clear, because they said that
“anyone convicted of a knife crime can expect to face a prison sentence.”
We know what the press say their Government will do, but what will the Minister do in the sentencing review to be published next week?
Mr Blunt
This may be slightly tedious, but I must say again that the shadow Secretary of State will have to wait until the proposals are presented in a comprehensive fashion to the House. Of course, knife crime is an extremely serious offence, as we have acknowledged, but, as far as the precise proposals are concerned, the right hon. Gentleman, like everyone else, will have to wait until they are presented in a coherent fashion to the House first, as is appropriate.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
6. What discussions he has had with the Deputy Prime Minister on the effects on prisons and prison staff of making arrangements for the implementation of voting rights for prisoners.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
9. What discussions he has had with the Deputy Prime Minister on the effects on prisons and prison staff of making arrangements for the implementation of voting rights for prisoners.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
10. What discussions he has had with the Deputy Prime Minister on the effects on prisons and prison staff of making arrangements for the implementation of voting rights for prisoners.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Ministers are considering how to implement the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, and when decisions have been taken, they will be announced to the House in the usual way.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that prison staff already have to deal with requests for further information about how voting rights will be implemented—not only from prisoners, but from local communities who have grave concerns about the matter. Will he meet a group of MPs for whom that is a particular concern, so that the needs of our constituents might be considered?
Mr Clarke
I will consider that request when we have announced our conclusions, which we will, to the House. The previous Government were incapable of taking a decision on the Hirst recommendation, which was made five years ago, and we are about to produce our proposals. I would point out that remand prisoners already vote, and always have voted; they vote by post, and it has never caused any difficulty. In the end, there is no suggestion that prisoners are going to be registered in the prison at which they are Her Majesty’s guests. Those that bother to get registered will be registered in constituencies scattered across the country. Of course I will consider the logistics if, after we have produced our proposals, it is apparent that any particular logistical problem will be posed.
Mr Bain
When the Secretary of State meets the Deputy Prime Minister, will he pass on the grave disquiet of the people of Glasgow that the 93 convicted sex offenders, 10 convicted murderers and 15 convicted attempted murderers in Barlinnie jail in my constituency have not been exempted from the Government’s review on the right to vote? The Secretary of State knows that neither the European Court of Human Rights nor case law from Strasbourg requires that such individuals should have the right to vote, so why do the Government not just do the right thing and rule it out?
Mr Clarke
There is no suggestion—and there never has been—that every prisoner is going to get the vote. It is not the Government’s consultation that is responsible, but a judgment given five years ago by the European Court of Human Rights—a Council of Europe institution —and we are now deciding how to implement it. I cannot anticipate the Government’s decision, which will be taken collectively by Ministers, but the idea that lots of murderers and rapists in Barlinnie prison are all going to be given the vote is, I suspect, rather fanciful.
John Woodcock
The Secretary of State must understand the grave concern about this measure from the public and, I hope, from both sides of the House. If the Secretary of State is clear that there is no suggestion that murderers and rapists will be given the vote, why will he not simply rule out at least those two categories right now?
Mr Clarke
The principal consideration is to take a decision and present it to the House. I am trying to shoot down some of the fanciful ideas that have been expressed. I understand the real concern about this: most of the House would have preferred not to change at all the existing ban on prisoners voting, but doing nothing—the previous Government’s position—and allowing solicitors to go running around prisons signing up prisoners to get compensation for having their civil liberties denied is piling up quite a bill. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Ministers will very soon resolve any uncertainty.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
But is there not a contradiction at the heart of the Government’s policy? Currently, all Members of Parliament represent all prisoners living in prisons within their constituency, yet the Secretary of State has said that they will be represented by Members of the constituencies where they were last registered. That contradiction needs to be resolved if representation of prisoners by prisoners is to be taken seriously.
Mr Clarke
I think there is some confusion in the House about the convention that applies, which both I and my hon. Friend should resolve—although it is not my responsibility to resolve it. I take the view that I represent my constituents when they are in prison wherever it is that they are imprisoned, but I know that other MPs take the view that they represent every resident of a prison in their constituency. Perhaps we should resolve the parliamentary conventions on this matter at the same time as we have a look at which prisoners might have voting rights.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
In considering the Government’s policy on this thorny issue, will the Secretary of State, if he has to abide by the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, restrict the right to vote to those prisoners at the lowest level of seriousness—for example, those dealt with by the magistrates courts for summary offences only?
Mr Clarke
This applies only to prisoners—obviously, people who have not been in prison do not lose their vote at all. We have to comply with the judgment of the Court. The problem is that this extremely annoying issue will become even more annoying to the public and everyone else if we simply do nothing and wait until some huge financial judgment is made against the taxpayer, which will turn the present public anger into fury. That is why we are going to bring forward considered proposals. At the moment, someone not sent to prison does not lose their vote—irrespective of what other punishment they receive in their summary trial.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
The Hirst judgment says that article 3 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights obliges this House to give some prisoners the vote; as we have heard, it also gives rise to financial compensation to some prisoners who have been denied that right. Although I sympathise with my right hon. and learned Friend, does he accept that there is an intellectual case for, in time, bringing powers back to Westminster in this area by repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 and withdrawing from the European convention of human rights?
Mr Clarke
There has been another British case today, which has clarified the situation slightly and has underlined the fact that the Government have discretion on how to comply with their obligations. In due course, obviously, we shall establish a commission on how best to give effect to our human rights obligations in this country, but that will not happen until at least next year.
The coalition Government do not intend to withdraw from the European convention on human rights, which was imposed by the victorious British on the rest of Europe after the war in order to establish British values across the countries that were recovering from fascism and was drafted largely by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, who put what he thought were the best principles of British justice into it.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
7. What steps he is taking to increase the number of prison places.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Our current plan is to build the prisons to which we are contractually committed. On the basis of current policies, we expect prisoner numbers to rise from about 85,393 last Friday to about 88,000 in 2015, and we expect the implementation of the proposals that will be outlined in the forthcoming Green Paper to reduce that number to about 3,000 fewer than today’s figure. We will always provide enough prison places for those who the courts judge should receive a custodial sentence.
Andrew Rosindell
Notwithstanding the Government’s efforts to stabilise the prison population, will the Minister assure us that those who commit crimes and deserve to go to prison will continue to do so?
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Minister will know that it is a basic human right for people to be incarcerated as near as possible to where they reside. When will the Government comply with that basic requirement by providing a prison facility for north Wales, especially as we understand that Shrewsbury prison is to be closed? Such a prison would serve the whole of mid-Wales as well as north Wales, and, as the Minister knows, its establishment is long overdue.
Mr Blunt
I am not sure that I recognise that as a basic human right, but it is certainly operationally sensible. Providing support for prisoners when they are incarcerated away from their families is an important part of assisting their rehabilitation into society. However, speculation about which prisons might or might not close in future is not appropriate at this stage. We will conduct a review of prison capacity in the light of the Green Paper and the responses to it, and only at that stage—
Mr Speaker
Order. I think that we have the drift of the Minister’s answer. We are grateful.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Surely the reoffending rate is a critical factor affecting the number of prison places that are required. Restorative justice programmes such as that of the Sycamore Tree foundation, which operates at Haverigg prison in Cumbria, are both inexpensive and highly effective in reducing reoffending. What steps is the Minister taking to increase the number of restorative justice programmes in Britain’s prisons?
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
According to the latest figures, more than half the prisons in England and Wales are officially overcrowded. If the Minister is ultimately successful in reducing the number of prisoners, what will his priority be—to close prisons or to reduce overcrowding?
Mr Blunt
It is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman to ask that question. As a former Prisons Minister, he bears part of the responsibility for the level of overcrowding that we have inherited.
Sadly, the answer is that we are not in a position to create enough prison places to be able to address the problem of overcrowding. That will probably have to wait for more economically propitious times. It will take us a while to get the economy into the shape that will enable us to deal with the prison overcrowding that we have inherited.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
8. How much was spent on legal aid for cases in respect of immigration appeals in the last 12 months.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
In 2009-10, overall legal aid expenditure on advice and representation in immigration and asylum appeals was £85 million. I should, however, point out that it is not possible to identify expenditure for initial advice separately from expenditure before the immigration and asylum tribunal in cases in which both advice and representation are provided.
Mr Evennett
I thank the Minister for his response. Can he confirm that, under the coalition Government proposals, immigration cases will be taken out of the scope of legal aid?
Mr Djanogly
Yes, I can confirm to my hon. Friend that we are consulting on removing all immigration matters from the scope of legal aid, other than for those in immigration detention. That means removing matters such as varying leave to remain—for example, if a foreign student wants to change their visa to get permission to work instead, or, indeed, to stay here for longer. Such cases will no longer be at the taxpayer’s expense.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
One of the ways in which we can cut down on waste in the legal aid budget is to address no-shows by Home Office officials at immigration hearings. Can the Minister tell me the number of cases in which Home Office representatives do not turn up to these hearings and the cost of that to the legal aid bill, or will he write to me with that information?
Mr Djanogly
I will write to the right hon. Gentleman with that information, but I can tell him that it is an issue. Defendants’ representatives not turning up for hearings is also an issue.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Responding to Lord Carter’s 2006 review of legal aid, the Minister said it put very vulnerable individuals at risk, that people were not being represented and that the structure was “being destroyed”, and he concluded:
“I would say it’s a meltdown.”
Carter reduced the budget by about 5%, whereas the current Government’s Green Paper cuts civil legal aid income by 42%. How would the Minister describe that?
Mr Djanogly
The important point to make is that the last Government did, indeed, look at legal aid: they had more than 30 consultations over a five-year period, including Carter. The result of that was that providers and those in receipt of legal aid were lost within the system and did not know where cuts were coming from, and what we are doing now is putting forward a comprehensive review of legal aid, whereby providers and all stakeholders will be able to see their position within the system—and as a result the consultation will be accurate.
Mr Slaughter
Well, we can all make what we will of that, but the fact remains that more than half a million people who may have unfairly lost their job, their income, their right to decent housing or access to their children—or, indeed, who may have been deported from the country, as the Minister has just said—will now go without advice or representation, whereas criminal legal aid and some of the high-cost advocates earning more than £900,000 a year are largely untouched. The Secretary of State said in his statement on these measures that it was important to strike a balance. Does the Minister not think that the balance has been got wrong in this case?
Mr Djanogly
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the consultation document, which has clearly got a section on very high-cost cases, and on which we have significant proposals. More particularly, the Labour manifesto said it wanted to cut legal aid, so if he is going to talk about our cuts, perhaps he might like to say where he would be making cuts in legal aid.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
11. What recent discussions he has had on the provision of services to people who have experienced trauma as a result of a miscarriage of justice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
We want to help people who have suffered trauma as a result of a miscarriage of justice to access support that ought already to be available, for instance through the national health service. We will work with the Department of Health, other Departments and the voluntary sector to that end.
Katy Clark
I thank the Minister for that answer. I recently met the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, as constituents of mine have been affected by having been wrongly imprisoned for lengthy periods. I understand that under the previous Government, the Justice Ministry was looking at how better to provide support services to such people. Is that work still going on, and will the Minister be willing to meet me and other Members with constituents who have been similarly affected, because we are not dealing with this issue well enough at present?
Mr Blunt
I am afraid that we have concluded that, due to the extremely challenging financial climate, it no longer makes sense to go ahead with the work started by the last Government on identifying the unmet medical needs of those who have suffered a miscarriage of justice because there are not going to be additional funds to meet those needs.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Despite that answer, will the Minister still agree to meet those interested MPs, because in a previous answer he said the Government would ensure that services were available through the NHS, whereas the fact is that they are not? These particular needs can best be met—and most effectively and most cost-efficiently—by having a more discrete system, and it would pay the Minister and the Department to meet these MPs and MOJO.
Mr Blunt
I am, of course, very happy to meet parliamentary colleagues to discuss this issue. Meetings are due between Ministry of Justice officials and those in the Department of Health to see how matters can be improved. I am sure that those discussions will be improved by the knowledge that I will gain from colleagues, so I am happy to have the meetings.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
12. What steps he plans to take to fulfil the aspiration in the coalition agreement to increase the efficiency of the legal aid system.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
The consultation document “Proposals for the Reform of Legal Aid in England and Wales”, published on 15 November, sets out proposals to make the legal aid scheme more efficient. We looked from first principles at its scope, the eligibility rules, and the fees paid to lawyers and other providers of legal aid. We looked at alternative sources of funding, and we are also consulting on reducing administrative bureaucracy and making the system simpler to operate.
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer, but will he take this opportunity to make it clear that the issues raised by Des Hudson of the Law Society are unfounded, that access to justice will still be available for people who really need it and that worthy organisations such as Citizens Advice are valued by this Government?
Mr Djanogly
Yes, we are certainly very keen to work with voluntary organisations such as Citizens Advice to ensure more efficient and focused provision of legal aid, and included in that will be our proposals for a civil law telephone gateway service. By refocusing legal aid we aim to ensure that taxpayers’ money will be prioritised to help the vulnerable receive the legal support that they need.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that proposals to close both the county court and magistrates court in my town of Whitehaven have been met with widespread anxiety and have been condemned by the local bench and local solicitors. Will he agree to meet us, so that he can learn at first hand just how ruinous the proposals would be if enacted?
Mr Djanogly
The courts consultation closed in mid-September. We have been examining the significant number of responses and will be reporting back to the House on them before the new year. I am sure that the representations that the hon. Gentleman has made on his local courts will be examined and, following our decision, I would be happy to meet him.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
13. What recent estimate he has made of the number of offenders with an alcohol dependency.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
17. What recent estimate he has made of the number of offenders with an alcohol dependency.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
In a survey carried out in 2005-06, 23% of prisoners sentenced from one month to four years reported having drunk alcohol four weeks prior to custody and said that they would find it quite difficult or impossible to stop drinking. We also estimate that 37% of offenders subject to community orders have an alcohol-related problem linked to their offending and their risk of reconviction.
Nick Smith
I thank the Minister for that reply. Given that alcohol misuse is estimated to cost £7.3 billion in crime and antisocial behaviour, and that it was a factor in 18,000 incidents of violent crime in Wales in 2008, can he assure the House that help for prisoners with alcohol problems will be given the same priority as help for offenders with drug problems?
Nick Herbert
It is important that alcohol problems are tackled, both among offenders given community orders and those in custody. We know that treatment for alcohol problems is cost-effective; the United Kingdom alcohol treatment trial found that for every pound spent on treating problem drinkers £5 is saved on costs to health, social and criminal justice services. That is why, in the long term, providing such services on a payment-by-results basis is the answer.
Mrs Chapman
Given the undeniable link between alcohol misuse and crime, does the Minister believe that someone’s being excessively drunk is seen as sufficiently aggravating by the courts when they pass sentence?
Nick Herbert
We have not received any representations to the contrary. These matters can be considered by the Sentencing Guidelines Council, and we believe that sufficient powers are available to the courts. The important thing is that when offenders are sentenced, they should receive adequate treatment—that applies both to community and jail sentences—so that addiction can be dealt with.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
14. When he expects to publish his proposals on the future of sentencing policy.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
We intend to publish a Green Paper setting out proposals on sentencing and rehabilitation in December.
Richard Harrington
On a recent visit to the Hertfordshire probation trust in Watford, I was impressed by the efforts it has made and the success it has achieved in reducing reoffending rates. The staff told me, in particular, of their view that short-term prison sentences were detrimental to those efforts. Will the Secretary of State come to Watford to meet them, so that he can share those experiences?
Mr Clarke
I am grateful for that invitation; I have already received a letter. I shall do my best, although I am not quite sure when I will get to visit the probation trust. The Government are placing particular emphasis on rehabilitation and on reducing our quite appalling reoffending rates, as we have ever since my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice led for us on this matter in opposition. I accept that a great deal of good work is being done on the ground now and obviously we will have to build on it. I quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) about the ineffectiveness of some short sentences, because nothing whatever is done when people go out of the gate once they have finished their sentence, but I am quite clear that we cannot get rid of all short-term sentences. I have always believed that for a certain number of cases no alternative is reasonably practical for magistrates.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The crimes of child abduction, gross indecency with children, sexual activity with a child under 13, sexual assault of a female and sexual assault of a male have all attracted custodial sentences of six months or under in the past year. Will the Lord Chancellor give a commitment that under the sentencing review none of those crimes will be subject to community-based sentences, as he has proposed potentially in comments that he has made to date?
Mr Clarke
I have no idea why the heart of our sentencing reform is described by sections of the press and some Members of Parliament as just getting rid of all short-term sentences and replacing them with community sentences. I have no doubt that there is an important role for community sentences, and we must make them more credible, more punitive and more effective—some of them already are. The important thing is that every case should receive the right sentence based on the facts and the offender in order to protect the public. That will be the underlying aim of the entire sentencing review.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
15. What assessment he has made of the effects on the NHS of removing clinical negligence from the scope of legal aid.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
Clinical negligence cases against the NHS are funded approximately 50:50 between legal aid and no win, no fee agreements with lawyers. We will be interested to understand through our consultation the specific impact on the NHS of the removal of clinical negligence cases from the scope of legal aid, which should save some £17 million to legal aid. However, we also estimate that our proposals to reform no win, no fee conditional fee agreements will save around £50 million each year to the NHS in reduced legal costs.
Dr Wollaston
Could reducing legal aid for clinical negligence lead to an upsurge in no win, no fee deals and an increase in the compensation culture?
Mr Djanogly
My hon. Friend is right to point out that changes in one area can have knock-on implications in another area. It is important to point out that that is precisely why we put out the legal aid consultation document on the same day as Sir Rupert Jackson’s proposals on no win, no fee agreements. The two can be weighed up together and the consultation will therefore take a holistic approach.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
On legal aid, the Minister has spoken today about working with voluntary sector organisations. Community Links’ welfare advice service in my area has seen 9,000 people so far this year. It is very cost-effective and has been paid for until now by legal aid. Under the Minister’s proposals, it will not be in the future. How will that work be supported by the Government in the period ahead?
Mr Djanogly
People have the option of getting conditional fee agreements, also known as no win, no fee agreements. They can go to a lawyer and that lawyer will take a view on the chances of success. The question that must be asked—we will be very interested to hear the responses to it during the consultation—is whether, if the private sector is not prepared to take on the risk, the public sector should be prepared to do so and what proportion of that risk it will be prepared to take on.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Following my question to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice during his legal aid statement, is there not a danger that, given the complexity of clinical negligence cases, the most vulnerable will not have access to no win, no fee simply because such companies will not offer their services to them?
Mr Djanogly
There will still be power to grant legal aid in exceptional cases where a CFA will not be available, although that power will be restricted. The fact remains that CFAs will still be available for people with no ability to fund their cases so that they can take proceedings.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
16. What estimate he has made of the reduction in the number of family law cases that will be eligible for legal aid during the period of the comprehensive spending review.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
We estimate that removing from the scope of legal aid most private family law cases, except for those involving domestic violence, forced marriage and international child abduction, would reduce the number of people receiving advice under the legal aid scheme by about 211,000 annually and of those represented in court by just under 54,000 annually. Together, those figures represent an estimated annual saving of £178 million. However, we have also decided to retain legal aid for mediation to help separating couples sort out their issues without the courts where possible.
Tony Lloyd
The Minister’s last point is very important. In many such private cases, child-protection issues arise. Can he give the House an absolute guarantee that private cases in which child protection becomes an issue will still receive legal aid? If not, these cost savings will be at the expense of our children’s future.
Mr Djanogly
Absolutely; where a public family law matter arises, that case will remain within scope. If a child is subject to being taken away from their parents, legal aid will be available.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Following the conviction of Jon Venables on 23 July for possessing and distributing indecent images of children, I commissioned Sir David Omand to undertake an independent review into the management of Jon Venables from his release from local authority detention in June 2001 until his recall to custody on 24 February 2010. Today, I have placed a copy of Sir David’s report in the Library. Sir David has concluded that Jon Venables was effectively and properly supervised at an appropriate level and frequency of contact, having regard to the particular circumstances of his case. Sir David also concludes that no reasonable supervisory regime would have been expected to detect his use of the computer to download indecent images. The report contains a number of recommendations on the future management of this and similar cases that will be taken forward by the National Offender Management Service.
Mrs Chapman
Nineteen-year-old Scots Guardsman Andrew Gibson was killed in a Darlington nightclub. Yesterday, the Attorney-General said that he was unable to refer what many view as an excessively lenient sentence of just two and a half years to the Court of Appeal. Will the Secretary of State undertake to investigate the awarding of lenient sentences in which alcohol is an aggravating factor?
Mr Clarke
The Attorney-General has a power to exercise in these cases and he has to exercise it in his quasi-judicial role by making a proper judgment and not just reacting politically. I understand the hon. Lady’s concern about that case, but sentences are normally imposed by the court that has had the opportunity to hear all the evidence, facts and information about the accused person. The Attorney-General takes seriously his responsibility to step in where a mistake seems to have been made and ask a higher court to consider imposing a more serious sentence. I cannot claim to exercise any control over him in that regard; it is his difficult judgment to take in each case.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
T2. The Lord Chancellor will be only too aware that one of his key responsibilities is looking after the Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Alderney and Sark. Will he explain to the House why the Crown dependencies were yet again refused the right to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday this year? Will he address this issue to ensure that next year they can do so like other countries in the Commonwealth?
Mr Clarke
My right hon. Friend Lord McNally has the responsibility and the honour to lead on matters concerning Crown dependencies, which I assure my hon. Friend he takes very seriously. I keep discovering that he has made visits to the Crown dependencies to discuss these matters. I was quite unaware of this problem and I shall make inquiries of Lord McNally and those responsible for the ceremony about the background to this issue of laying a wreath on behalf of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The Secretary of State announced in the House last week—a day after ITN—that significant sums of money were to be paid to British residents and citizens who were detained at Guantanamo Bay, and he explained the factors behind the decision. Does he agree that there is an urgent need to resolve the claims of British victims of terrorist attacks overseas and will he commit today to such compensation being paid as a matter of urgency?
Mr Clarke
The right hon. Gentleman rightly expresses irritation about leaks to newspapers and the television, and I assure him that I share all that irritation. [Interruption.] If I were indulging in the kind of masterful spin-doctoring of the previous Administration, I would have trailed them better than occurred either in the newspapers or ITN. I made the statement when I did because I was told that ITN had carried the news the night before. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that, if he helps me to find out where the information is coming from, I will take appropriate steps.
On compensation for victims of terrorism and crimes, we are having to review the criminal injuries compensation scheme. We are having to look at the prospects for the compensation for terrorism scheme. The fact is that we were left with a system of criminal injuries compensation that was not working. We have enormous liabilities piling up for which the previous Government had not made adequate funds available, so we have hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of arrears of claims.
Mr Speaker
Order. There is a lot of interest and little time. From now on, we need short questions and short answers.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
T3. What assurance can Ministers give my constituents in west Cornwall that the legal aid reforms published last week will not adversely affect the coverage of, or reduce access to, legal aid, particularly in civil and family proceedings?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
The hard facts are that the amount of legal aid being paid out in civil cases will be reduced. As part of the Government’s savings of £2 billion, £350 million is subject to be taken out of legal aid by 2014-15. That means that we will focus legal aid on the most vulnerable who need legal representation.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T4. A number of professionals have contacted me about their worries that, once the Youth Justice Board disappears, there will be a lack of co-ordination and an increase in reoffending by young people. Can the Secretary of State give any reassurance to those professionals that when their work disappears inside the Ministry of Justice, that co-ordination work will still be taken seriously?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)
Yes, I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. As the Minister with responsibility for youth justice, I will make sure that the functions carried out by the Youth Justice Board will be properly executed within the Ministry of Justice. The Youth Justice Board has done good work, but now it is time for Ministers to take direct responsibility for the work.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
T5. Families in Witham town are concerned about the presence of paedophiles and sex offenders, and the risk that they pose to children in our local community. What steps is the Secretary of State taking, in conjunction with other Government agencies, to ensure that my constituents are protected from those dangerous individuals?
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
My hon. Friend might know about the child sex offender disclosure scheme, which is being extended to 24 police forces, having been successfully piloted in 11 police force areas. It allows members of the public to ask the police to check whether people have contact with their children at risk. They have already successfully protected children and provided considerable reassurance to parents.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
T6. It is clearly inappropriate for convicted criminals to celebrate Christmas with raucous parties in prison. Is the Secretary of State certain that present Ministry of Justice guidance will prohibit such activity this Christmastime?
Mr Clarke
I hate to tell the hon. Lady that there are no good parties going on in prisons to which I can invite her over Christmas. The whole story about parties was faintly ridiculous. The announcement by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) did not mention parties and had very little to do with parties. Time was—I can remember from my youth—when a popular song began with
“The warden threw a party in the county jail,”
but we do not approve of that kind of thing nowadays.
Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
Every suicide is a tragedy, but particularly in prisons it is more harrowing for the family, other prisoners and the prison staff. With that in mind, can one of the Ministers give an update on the programme of installing safer cells?
Mr Blunt
About 6,200 safer cells have been provided since 2005. I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s consistent interest in that. Our objective is to make sure that safer cells are available in all circumstances for offenders deemed to be vulnerable and to require such accommodation.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
T7. It was as recently as 30 June, when the Government had had nearly two months to examine and find how unexpectedly bad the public finances were, that the Secretary of State said that he would explore “proposals to restore public trust through minimum/maximum sentencing”.Can he tell us what has changed since then?
Mr Clarke
Not much has changed. We are exploring proposals of all kinds. We are about to produce a Green Paper in December, and as is always the case—there is nothing new in this—people try to guess what might be in it. Some people make informed guesses, some make uninformed guesses and some get it right. The hon. Gentleman will have to wait until December to see our final judgments about how best to reform a sentencing system which is over-complicated, difficult for the judges to understand and ripe for reform, and which is completely failing to protect the public by getting reoffending rates down to a sensible level.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
Recently, a group of Travellers was served with an eviction order from the site next to St Peter’s, a new school in my constituency of Filton and Bradley Stoke, only for another group of Travellers to move in as soon as the site was vacated. Will the Minister look at the law in question to see whether it can be changed so that it is site-specific, rather than applying to individuals in certain cases?
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
T9. As part of the review that the Secretary of State is carrying out into implementing giving prisoners the right to vote, will he consider the issue as, in some ways, a positive opportunity to prepare them for reintegration into society? How is he approaching that?
Mr Clarke
Of course we would welcome prisoners preparing in any way for rehabilitation as honest citizens in society. I wait to see how many prisoners will actually take advantage of the opportunity when we decide the extent to which we have to go to comply with the Court judgment. It is conceivable that in some cases the vote would widen the mind of prisoners and prepare them for taking on the obligations of citizenship. I actually do not think, however, that we should take that too far.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The Government intend to amend the law on the prosecution of universal jurisdiction offences. Does the Lord Chancellor agree that it would be unseemly for decisions relating to those prosecutions to rest with the Law Officer who is also a politician, as would be the case for the Attorney-General?
Mr Clarke
The consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is what we are contemplating. The Government have committed themselves to that. This is a question of arrest; we are looking at citizen’s arrest. We want to keep the right of citizen’s arrest but we do not want it to be a publicity stunt based on inadequate evidence, so we are contemplating making it subject to the DPP’s consent. We are simply trying to find the legislative time to do it. The Government have committed to doing this as rapidly as possible.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Can the Justice Secretary tell us how many times he or his Ministers have spoken to the Scottish Justice Minister about prisoners voting rights?
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Last Friday, a 16-year-old boy in my constituency was horrifically beaten and stabbed outside his school in full view of his classmates. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we need to reserve the harshest penalties for those who viciously wield knives and to make sure that there is a strong deterrent against doing so? That young man lost his life as a result of that horrible crime.
Mr Clarke
I am, of course, shocked to hear of the outrageous nature of the crime in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We have to make sure that all our sentencing proposals give the courts all the powers they need. It is a question of how to set out the severity of the appropriate sentences, at the same time leaving the court in the end to decide on the exact sentence, based on the circumstances of the case and the offender. Although the recent habit—particularly under the last Government, who produced 21 different criminal justice Bills—was to keep producing very elaborate rules, in my experience judges do not need to be told that an offence of the kind described by my hon. Friend deserves the full force of the law and the severe punishment that the public would undoubtedly expect for such a case.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Is not the vote for prisoners a dyed-in-the-wool Lib Dem policy? Is that not the real reason why the Secretary of State will not stand up for us and tell the European Court that the ruling is simply unacceptable to the British people and the vast majority of our MPs?
Mr Clarke
It is not a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative policy, it is true, but it should be the policy of every responsible Member of the House to accept that we have to comply with a judgment of the European Court, because nobody is advocating withdrawing from the convention. The hon. Gentleman’s party accepted that. His party never repudiated the judgment; it always accepted that it was going to have to give votes to prisoners. It wasted five years and two consultation exercises, however, because it was incapable of taking a decision in advance of an election—or at all, as it happened.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
On a less controversial subject, what scope is there for mediation in family law cases, and will such cases continue to qualify for legal aid?
Mr Djanogly
We have taken the view that mediation should be retained within the scope of legal aid, and we think that it should be thoroughly encouraged. Too often, people take the course of court when they should look towards sorting out issues between themselves, and mediation will play a big part in enabling them to do that.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
On prisoner voting, will the Secretary of State have the grace to accept that before the election, given the implacable opposition from the whole of the Conservative party from top to bottom, with the then shadow Justice Secretary describing the proposal as “ludicrous”, and deep and profound concern on our Back Benches, it was not that one did not want to do something, but that there was no way in the world that such a measure would have passed through this House?
Mr Clarke
I am relieved to hear that the right hon. Gentleman, my predecessor, was so implacably determined to press on with this issue throughout his five years. He should perhaps have a word with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who could explain how committed he was. I am impressed that it was solely the opposition of Conservative Front Benchers that caused this five-year delay. I suspect that the right hon. Gentleman was having difficulty with Downing street and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and others in coming to any decision about anything, or doing anything about it, before the general election. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is so much noise in the Chamber that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) could not hear me call him.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Can my right hon. and learned Friend take the time to remind the House which party was in power when the Human Rights Act 1998 was incorporated into British law, and, more pertinently, who was the Secretary of State responsible for it?
Mr Clarke
It was certainly the Blair Government who introduced the Human Rights Act. I regret to say that I cannot remember who the Secretary of State was, but it was probably the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Actually, he probably has more things to answer for than that, but that was certainly one of the things that he put on the statute book.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss setting up an employers liability insurance bureau to ensure that victims of asbestos-related diseases who cannot trace either employer or insurer are compensated? I am sure that if he will meet up with me, I can fill him in and persuade him why it is so important.
Mr Clarke
The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), will probably be in touch with the hon. Lady to deal with that suggestion. There are obviously very difficult issues involved in these asbestos claims—they troubled the previous Government, and there have been decisions for the courts. We will therefore consider her suggestion with interest; it has been made before, but we will consider it again and come back to her.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
The Government are rightly focused on getting more people who are out of work into work, but a particular group of concern is ex-offenders. Will the Government, as part of the big society, continue to support charitable organisations such as the Apex Trust, which does a wonderful job in getting those offenders back into work?
Controlling Migration
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on immigration.
Controlled migration has benefited the UK economically, socially and culturally, but when immigration gets out of control, it places great pressure on our society, economy and public services. In the 1990s, net migration to Britain was consistently in the tens of thousands each year, but under Labour, net migration to Britain was close to 200,000 per year for most years since 2000. As a result, over Labour’s time in office net migration totalled more than 2.2 million people—more than double the population of Birmingham.
We cannot go on like this. We must tighten up our immigration system, focusing on tackling abuse and supporting only the most economically beneficial migrants. To achieve that, we will have to take action across all routes to entry—work visas, student visas and family visas—and break the link between temporary routes and permanent settlement. That will bring significant reductions in non-European Union migration to the UK and restore it to more sustainable levels. We aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands back down to the tens of thousands.
On the work routes to entry, all the evidence shows that it is possible to reduce numbers while promoting growth and underlining the message that Britain is open for business. After consulting widely with business and with the Migration Advisory Committee, I have decided to reduce economic migration through tier 1 and tier 2 from 28,000 to 21,700. That will mean a fall of more than a fifth compared with last year in the number of economic migrants coming in through tiers 1 and 2, excluding intra-company transfers.
Business groups have told us that skilled migrants with job offers—tier 2—should have priority over those admitted without a job offer, who are in tier 1. I have therefore set the tier 1 limit at 1,000, a reduction of more than 13,000 on last year’s number. Such a sharp reduction has enabled me to set the tier 2 limit at 20,700, an increase of nearly 7,000 on last year’s number.
The old tier 1, supposedly the route for the best and the brightest, has not attracted highly skilled workers. At least 30% of tier 1 migrants work in low-skilled occupations such as stacking shelves, driving taxis or working as security guards, and some do not have a job at all, so we will close the tier 1 general route. Instead, I want to use tier 1 to attract more investors, entrepreneurs and people of exceptional talent. Last year, investors and entrepreneurs accounted for fewer than 300 people, and that is not enough, so I will make the application process quicker and more user-friendly, and I will not limit the numbers of those wealth creators who can come to Britain.
There are also some truly exceptional people who should not need sponsorship from an employer but whom we would wish to welcome to Britain. I will therefore introduce a new route within tier 1 for people of exceptional talent—the scientists, academics and artists who have achieved international recognition, or are likely to do so. The number will be limited to 1,000 a year.
Tier 2 has also been abused and misused. Last year more than 1,600 certificates were issued for care assistants to come to the UK. At the same time, more than 33,000 care assistants who were already here were claiming jobseeker’s allowance, so I will restrict tier 2 to graduate-level jobs.
We have listened to business and will keep intra-company transfers outside the limit. However, we will place a new salary threshold of £40,000 on any intra-company transfers of longer than 12 months. Recent figures show that 50% of intra-company transfers meet those criteria. That will ensure that those coming are only the senior managers and key specialists who international companies need to move within their organisations.
I should like to thank the Migration Advisory Committee for its advice and recommendations. Next year, I will ask it to review the limit in order to set new arrangements for 2012-13.
However, the majority of non-EU migrants are, in fact, students. They represent almost two thirds of the non-EU migrants entering the UK each year, and we cannot reduce net migration significantly without reforming student visas. Hon. Members and others might imagine that by students, we mean people who come here for a few years to study at university and then go home. However, nearly half of all students coming here from abroad are actually coming to study a course below degree level, and abuse is particularly common at those lower levels. A recent check of students studying at private institutions below degree level showed that a quarter could not be accounted for. Too many students at lower levels have been coming here with a view to living and working rather than studying, and we need to stop that abuse.
As with economic migration, we will therefore refocus student visas on the areas that add the greatest value, and in which evidence of abuse is limited. I will shortly launch a public consultation on student visas. I will consult on restricting entry to only those studying at degree level, but with some flexibility for highly trusted sponsors to offer courses at a lower level. I will also consult on closing the post-study route, which last year allowed some 38,000 foreign graduates to enter the UK labour market at a time when one in 10 UK graduates were unemployed.
Last year, the family route accounted for nearly 20% of non-EU immigration. Clearly, British nationals must be able to marry the person of their choice, but those who come to the UK must be able to participate in society. From next week, we will require all those applying for marriage visas to demonstrate a minimum standard of English. We are also cracking down on sham marriages, and will consult on extending the probationary period of settlement for spouses beyond the current two years.
Finally, we need to restrict settlement. It cannot be right that people coming to fill temporary skills gaps have open access to permanent settlement. Last year, 62,000 people settled in the UK on that basis. Settling in Britain should be a privilege to be earned, not an automatic add-on to a temporary way in, so we will end the link between temporary and permanent migration.
I intend to introduce these changes to the work route and some of the settlement changes from April 2011. I will bring forward other changes soon after. This is a comprehensive package that will help us to meet our goal of reducing net migration, at the same time as attracting the brightest and the best, and those with the skills our country needs. This package will serve the needs of British business, it will respond to the wishes of the British public, and it will give us the sustainable immigration system that we so badly need.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me start by thanking the Home Secretary for the—rather late—advance sight of her statement, for coming to the House this afternoon in person, and for clarifying the confusion caused by the misleading leak of the contents of her statement to the BBC this morning. The Home Secretary is right to say that migration has made, and continues to make, a vital contribution to the economic vibrancy, business strength and vitality of our country. She is also right to say that it is essential for migration to be properly controlled, for reasons of economic well-being and social cohesion. But the question is: how? The Labour Government put in place transitional controls on EU migration, a suspension of unskilled work permits, a tough but flexible points system to manage skilled migration, and tighter regulation of overseas students. They closed 140 bogus colleges, and imposed new citizenship requirements on those seeking settlement.
At the general election, the leader of the Conservative party proposed to go further in two key respects. First, he proposed a new target to reduce net migration to the
“tens of thousands by 2015.”
To meet that target, he pledged a cap on immigration, which he said would be tougher than the points system. At the time, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party said:
“We can’t come up with promises like caps which don’t work”.
He then agreed to the cap in the coalition agreement. Since then, the Government have been in wholesale retreat, and today they are in wholesale confusion over this policy. The Confederation of British Industry, the chambers of commerce, universities, Nobel prize winners, and UK and foreign companies—large and small—have all highlighted the huge damage that the Government’s proposals would do to investment and jobs.
The Home Affairs Committee and the Migration Advisory Committee have said that the proposed cap applies to only 20% of non-EU migration. As a result, we have had the unedifying sight of the Prime Minister hinting at concession after concession—in the face, we read, of opposition from the Home Secretary, thanks to the excellent public lobbying and guerrilla tactics of the Business Secretary, who, sadly, is not in his place this afternoon. In his use of such tactics, he is less Stalin and more Trotsky—and certainly not Mr Bean.
Today the Home Secretary has come to the House to confirm the details of the retreat. We will keep a close eye on her proposals to see how they affect business and science. None the less, we join business representatives in welcoming her decision to exempt intra-company transfers of workers. What has caused confusion is this morning’s briefing to the BBC that the total cap would be 42,700 work permits. Her officials then had to clarify the fact that there is no such cap on that scale. She has now said that she will allow 21,700 tier 1 and tier 2 work permits, but with no cap on migration caused by intra-company transfers. If the number of intra-company transfers goes up, will she put in place an offsetting cut in tier 1 and tier 2 work permits? If not, and I very much hope that she will not, will she confirm that her supposed cap is a con, a guess and a fig leaf—in fact, no cap at all?
The permanent secretary revealed today that 9,000 jobs will be lost from the Home Office, the bulk of which will be from the UK Border Agency. Will the Home Secretary confirm that she can implement the policy that she has outlined today, and keep our borders secure, with those cuts? On family reunification she had nothing new to say—no target—and on overseas students she announced no action, just another consultation.
I have learned in the past few weeks that it is a mistake to ask the right hon. Lady a long list of questions, but there is one question to which it is vital that she should give an answer this afternoon: is it still the objective of the Prime Minister and the Government to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015? In her statement she repeated the goal, but she omitted to put a date on it. Will she reaffirm the 2015 promise? In recent months—on VAT and tuition fees—the Deputy Prime Minister has got into a habit of breaking pre-election promises. Can the Home Secretary reassure us that the Prime Minister has not caught the same disease? This is a simple question. Is the “tens of thousands” pledge still binding by 2015—yes or no?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that response. During the Labour leadership campaign, he said:
“as many of us found in the election, our arguments on immigration were not good enough.”
Listening to him today, I realised that Labour’s arguments on immigration are still not good enough. He made a number of claims about what the Labour Government did on immigration, including the claim that they introduced transitional controls when new member states entered the EU. I seem to remember that when the first tranche of new member states entered the EU, that is precisely what they did not do, despite every blandishment from the Conservatives to encourage them.
The right hon. Gentleman then said that the previous Government took action on the points-based system limits. I accept that, but what happened? They closed tier 3 of the points-based system of entry into the UK, but nothing else, so when tier 3 shut down, the number of student visas went up by tens of thousands. That is why this Government know that when we deal with one part of the immigration system, we must act across the whole of it.
I made the figures for the tier 1 and tier 2 caps that we are introducing absolutely clear in my statement. The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the UK Border Agency could manage the cuts and keep our borders secure with the changes in personnel that will be made, and the answer to that, unequivocally, is: yes, it can.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked me to confirm what I said in my statement, which is that we aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands back down to the tens of thousands—[Hon. Members: “When? By 2015?”] If he is to criticise the Government’s plans on immigration, the right hon. Gentleman must have a plan. So far he does not even have an immigration spokesman, let alone an immigration policy. The British people, who according to his own words felt that Labour was no longer on their side and no longer stood up for them on immigration, will not listen to him until he has an immigration plan.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
If the cap is set too low—in other words, at a level that stops UK businesses creating wealth and jobs—or too high, how quickly can it be adjusted, and how will the adjustment process work?
Mrs May
We are confident in the work that we have done, and in the fact that we have got the cap—and, crucially, the changes to policy—right. The announcement is about not just the figure, but the change in policy. The Migration Advisory Committee will undertake an annual review, so it will be able to advise the Government on what the figure should be in future, after considering how behaviour has adapted to the policy changes that we are introducing.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady says, “We will end the link between temporary and permanent migration.” How can temporary migrants, whether spouses or workers, earn permanent settlement?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she gives me the opportunity to say that we will be making initial changes to the settlement proposals, but that we also intend to consult more fully on exactly how we will introduce changes to settlement more widely. The initial changes will relate to the language requirements, but we will also look at the salary levels required for a sponsor to bring somebody in for settlement, and at the criminality thresholds. Those are the immediate issues that we will consider. I also intend to ask the Migration Advisory Committee to do some more work on changing the settlement requirements in the longer term.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration on this admirable programme and the excellent start made. May I press her a little further on the breaking of the link between settlement and people coming here to work temporarily? At what stage does she expect to introduce the measures necessary to achieve that?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and echo his thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration for his sterling work. We are keen to look at these other routes, particularly the settlement route, as well as at the other aspects, and over the coming months, as I indicated in response to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), we will be asking the Migration Advisory Committee to consider the matter so that we can introduce the changes. I hesitate to put an absolute date on that, but I hope that we will be able to announce something next year.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Home Secretary is more famous for her footwear than her headgear, but may I welcome the exemptions to the cap that she has announced today? The Home Affairs Committee made recommendations on intra-company transfers and elite scientists, and this is the right approach for the immigration policy that the Government have decided to pursue. On students, however, she will not be able to tackle the issue of bogus colleges unless she accepts a previous recommendation by the Committee to restrict the use of the word “college”. It is because this word continues to be used that people enter this country and pursue non-educational courses. Will she please look into that? Will she also examine how the whole administration of the immigration system operates in relation to illegal immigration?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. His turn of phrase encourages me to enjoy my time in front of the Home Affairs Committee when that happy occasion next comes around. He also made a serious point about his Committee’s past recommendations on this issue. We will certainly look at his specific suggestion. We need to consider a number of ways of ensuring that students coming to the UK are genuinely coming as students and to institutions properly offering an education and providing a qualification. This is not just about the immigration system, but about the reputation of the UK, because we do not want people to come here thinking they are coming to a college on an educational course, but then find that they have come to something quite different.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I generally welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement—but on EU migration, are we not in danger of ignoring the lessons of the past six years, when we imported more than 1 million low-wage and low-skilled workers, despite having 5 million of our own citizens on out-of-work benefits? Will she also explain why importing highly skilled workers is practical, when we have record numbers of UK and British graduates who could and should do those jobs?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right about the need to ensure that people in the UK are skilled enough to take up the work available. The figures show that EU-UK immigration and emigration numbers have broadly balanced out, and that net migration is coming predominantly from outside the EU. Our immigration policy has to fit in closely with the skills agenda that my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary announced last week. On occasions, however, there will be highly skilled workers with a specialism that a British company needs—in areas such as the energy sector, for example—and it is right for Britain to be open for business, and for us to allow companies to grow by introducing those workers into the UK.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Given the views that were so robustly expressed during the general election campaign, I welcome, on behalf of many of my constituents, the Home Secretary’s statement. Will she bear in mind another of their views, which is that they are now aware that the population of this country is primarily pushed by immigration? Will she tell us more certainly when she will return to the House to give a statement on breaking the link between coming here to work, which is often welcome, and almost automatically getting the right to citizenship?
Mrs May
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s comments, and for his work, with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), on settlement in the UK. They have both done a lot of important work in highlighting the issue. I am afraid that I will disappoint the right hon. Gentleman in not being able to give him a date when I will come to the House, but I assure him that I will do so in due course, to show how we will be able to change that route. As he said, the British public were absolutely clear that the Government should do something about this matter. They saw a Labour Government who did not do anything about immigration. We are a Government who will deliver for the British people.
Mr Speaker
Order. A great many Members are seeking to catch my eye, and I should like to accommodate as many as possible, so brevity from the Back Benches and the Front Benches alike is required.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. She correctly mentioned student visas, and then mentioned consultation. Given that we have had 10 years of almost mass immigration, will she assure the House that that consultation will be swift?
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The immigration cap may be designed for the south of England, but it definitely does not fit Scotland. Does the right hon. Lady not even start to understand and appreciate that Scotland has a different range of population and demographic issues? How can immigration caps possibly help Scotland, which is suffering from structural depopulation?
Mrs May
This proposal will help all parts of the United Kingdom, because it does two crucial things. It meets the British people’s need to see us controlling our immigration system, but it does so in a way that will enable business to bring in skilled workers. Many businesses in Scotland have spoken to us about the need to bring in skilled workers—in the energy sector, for example—and I believe that they will welcome our decision today.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
Specifically on the energy industries, on which so many jobs in my constituency depend, I welcome the flexibility and movement. Will the Home Secretary assure those industries that small companies in the supply chain will not face too bureaucratic a process for tier 2 applications, and that intra-company transfers will not be so time-limited as to make projects impossible to deliver?
Mrs May
I am happy to give the comfort that my hon. Friend asks for. Indeed, we will look at the administrative process for tier 2 applications to ensure that they involve as little bureaucracy as possible, with small companies particularly in mind. I hope that he will see some benefits from that.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
I wonder how many of us would be sitting here today, if in the 20th century our parents and grandparents had had to go through the sieve that the Home Secretary is putting in place to slow down the number of people coming to the UK. Does she agree, and will she say so more strongly, that the arrival of 10% of the English population in the form of Huguenots enriched Britain, that Jews who came here enriched Britain, and that Muslims and Pakistanis in my constituency have enriched Britain, and will she be very careful before she gives any comfort to Migrationwatch, the British National party and the United Kingdom Independence party, and their horrible anti-immigrant line?
Mrs May
I have to say that several of the groups that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned came here as refugees, and we are not talking about the asylum system today. We do need to examine the operation of our asylum system to ensure that it operates swiftly in the interests not only of the UK, but of those who are seeking asylum. However, that is not what we are debating today.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Hon. Members will be delighted that the Home Secretary has announced this policy to the House first, and that the BBC was so wonderfully misinformed this morning. In Wellingborough, immigration is the No. 1 issue, but my constituents are more concerned about people coming from the European Union. I wonder how that question is going to be addressed.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Are not these proposals a damp squib that will have no real impact on the number of people coming to Britain? Bearing in mind that the Government have already ruled out EU migrants, intra-company transfers, students, sportsmen and women and anyone in the arts, who is left?
Mrs May
Labour Members really are going to have to get their story in order as to exactly what they want to do on immigration. We want to ensure that Britain is open for business and that we can bring in skilled workers, which we will be doing, but that we can put in a cap that enables us to reduce net migration into this country. That is what the British people want, and it is what this coalition Government will deliver.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
May I welcome the statement as representing a constructive way forward? Does the Minister agree that foreign students should leave the country and reapply if they want to change their course or apply for a work permit?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend has raised an important point. One of the issues around students relates to those who come here to study one course and then move from course to course in order to be able to stay here. We will be looking at that issue in the consultation, and I can assure him that the proposal he has just made is exactly the kind of thing that will be in the consultation.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Home Secretary has suggested that there might be some concessions for those involved in the fishing industry. By and large, I welcome the proposals put forward today, but she has mentioned a concession of a year until September 2011 in regard to work permits for Filipino fisherman. Would she be prepared to consider extending that arrangement for another year, given that the fishing industry feels that it cannot do without it?
Mrs May
I think that we will have to look at that matter again closer to the September 2011 deadline. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that the more exceptions to the rules that people claim, the less effective the overall rules will be. We are absolutely clear that, within the rules that we have set, there are groups of very specialist workers. A number of issues have been raised with me about people with very particular skills who are needed by certain industries, and who we believe can come in, within the routes that we are setting out.
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Tony Blair’s adviser once said that the sharp increase in immigration over the past 10 years was partly due to
“a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural”.
Can the Home Secretary confirm today that so-called social objectives are no longer acceptable as a reason for immigration, and that it should be based instead on the economic benefits that immigrants can bring to this country?
Mrs May
As I said at the beginning of my statement, controlled migration can benefit this country economically, socially and culturally, but we are absolutely clear, in looking at the routes into the country for economic migrants, that the people who are coming in will bring a genuine economic benefit to the UK.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the £40,000 figure for intra-company transfers refer only to salaries or to salaries plus benefits?
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Immigration from Ireland to the UK has doubled from 7,000 to 14,000 as the euro crisis has developed. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, as well as having a legal right to come, those young people will be welcomed to our shores, and that we will continue to create the jobs that they need?
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
What procedures and resources will be available for enforcing these proposals, given that one of the problems, under successive Governments, has been people overstaying when their visa has expired?
Mrs May
One of the issues that we will look at among specific groups, such as students, is the number of people who overstay. That is one of the problems and abuses of the system, but, unlike the previous Labour Government, the current Government are committed—in addition to what we are doing on immigration—to proper UK border controls, through our work to ensure a UK border force.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
May I warmly welcome the sensible decisions that my right hon. Friend has taken? Does she agree that, although the economic migration that she intends to permit is clearly of benefit to the nation, a population pushed up to 70 million is not? That is the inheritance she faced, on official figures, from the policies of the Labour party.
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is clear that, if we take no action, the numbers of net migrants to the UK are likely to continue to be about 200,000 a year. We think that we need to do something about that, which is why we are introducing the package today and will be introducing further measures on other routes of entry.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
English language schools in my constituency contribute more than £100 million to the local economy, yet they face real difficulties because of the uncertainty surrounding the student visa system. Will the Secretary of State ensure that a cost-benefit analysis to the UK economy of overseas students who study at our schools is carried out? What words of reassurance can she give to bona fide language schools that there will be a swift resolution to the issue?
Mrs May
A number of hon. Members from all parts of the House with English language schools in their constituencies have raised the question of such schools. We take the issue very seriously, and one aspect of the student visas consultation will be aimed specifically at such schools and how we can introduce to the system some changes that will benefit them.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, which will be welcomed in my constituency by people of all backgrounds and political persuasions. In particular, I welcome the exemption for wealth creators and the re-focusing of tier 1 on eminent scientists. Will she tell the House a little more about how the 1,000 limit will work?
Mrs May
We are finalising the details of exactly how the 1,000 limit will work. We are also considering a role for bodies, such as research councils, in confirming those people who would be of benefit. We want to include not just those who are at a point in their career when they are known to be great scientists, artists and so forth, but also exceptionally talented people who are at the beginning of their careers.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The Home Secretary says that the aim is to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. Will she specify when she intends to do so? I thought I heard her say 2015, but doing that while slashing the border agency staff who need to do the job of policing is not going to wash with the British public.
Mrs May
I had answered the point about what I said in relation to tens of thousands, and I answered the shadow Home Secretary’s point about the UK Border Agency. As I said, we will be able to deliver the policy through the agency, and we will be able to ensure that the agency can deliver on its requirements, and we as a Government are committed to reinforcing our border security by introducing a border police command in the new national crime agency.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
There are many approved, well-established and highly reputable English language schools in my constituency. I support much of the statement’s content, but I am profoundly concerned about any further delay in sorting the problem with people coming to the UK to study English at such schools. I urge the Home Secretary to agree to meet me, a cross-party delegation of MPs and the Immigration Minister as soon as possible, because many companies and businesses in Eastbourne and throughout the UK are suffering badly. I urge her to grant me that opportunity.
Mrs May
I am well aware that my hon. Friend has made significant representations on that point, as have other Members. Indeed, I believe he has already met the Immigration Minister. I would be happy to meet a group of MPs to discuss the matter, and, as I said in response to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), we are very well aware of the point, which has been well made by many Members. We are conscious of the economic benefits of English language schools and some of their very specific issues with particular students from particular countries. We are looking at how we can address that issue in our student visa proposals, but I would be happy to meet a group of MPs.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I agree entirely with the need to take swift removal action against people who overstay their work or student visa entitlement, but this country has a problem with people who have overstayed for many decades and have given birth to children who are now adults. Can anything be done to regularise their situation so that they can go into legitimate employment without having to go through all the same hurdles and costs of applying for citizenship that others do? This represents a real barrier for those people.
Mrs May
We inherited the legacy programme from the last Government and had to deal with a significant backlog of cases, some of which related to people who have lived here for many years. Their cases had simply not been tackled with the right and proper degree of speediness. As the chief executive of the UK Border Agency confirmed to the Home Affairs Select Committee, we aim to finish that legacy programme by next summer. Looking to the future, we need to ensure that we do not get into the situation again of allowing people to come here and making them wait many years for an answer from the Government as to whether or not they can stay.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
It is a disgrace that last year 1,600 visas were granted to people who wanted to work in care homes when there are 33,000 care workers claiming jobseeker’s allowance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a kick in the teeth for those unemployed care workers, proving that her proposals are exactly the right policy to introduce?
Mrs May
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that this is the right policy for us to introduce. Many people, not just care workers, are unemployed, yet they have to see care workers being brought in from overseas. Of the many graduates in the UK, one in 10 are unemployed six months after their graduation. Last year, however, I believe that 38,000 overseas students stayed here after their graduation to work in the UK. We need to deal with that and we also need to ensure that we get the skills training right for people in the UK. The action we have taken on immigration today is not just an indictment of the last Labour Government’s failure to do something about the problem, but is also a very sad commentary on their failure to deliver a proper skills agenda for the UK.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
May I press the Home Secretary on the issue of language courses? I am thinking particularly of Sheffield International college in my constituency. With its 1,000 students, it plays an important role in the local economy and as a feeder institution helping students to proceed on to our two universities. All that makes an enormous economic contribution.
Mrs May
I thank the hon. Gentleman for echoing the importance of this issue, which was also raised by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion and by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd). As I said, I am happy to meet a group of MPs to discuss English language schools. We know how important that issue is and we are looking to address it through consultation.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her statement and tell her that my constituents will welcome the move away from expressing rhetoric about British jobs for British workers towards taking substantive action? Nevertheless, many people in Harlow will be concerned that their jobs are being given away, particularly by big companies like the major supermarkets, to temporary migrant workers. Will my right hon. Friend set out how her measures will help this situation?
Mrs May
I believe that our measures will help because they will tighten up the provisions to ensure that the people who come into this country under either tier 1 or tier 2 are the skilled workers that companies need, not those coming here to do low-skill jobs. We will also tighten up on the intra-company transfers route through the salary threshold so that that route is available, as it was always intended to be, for senior managers and people with specialist skills rather than for people doing low-skill jobs.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
May I concur with what has already been said about the position facing English language schools? It is a difficult position and it needs to be addressed urgently. This country is already losing custom as it goes to other countries—we are not the only country where English is spoken—so I urge the Home Secretary to do something about the problem quickly. Otherwise, areas like mine, where English language schools contribute significantly to the local economy, will suffer.
Mrs May
There may be other hon. Members who wish to raise the issue of English language schools from their constituency viewpoint. Let me say to the hon. Gentleman, as I have to others, that we are well aware of this issue and we are looking to address it as we deal with student visas. Although many English language schools offer a very good product and are of significant economic benefit to the UK, I also need to point out that this sector of the economy is not completely free from abuse. Sadly, some schools do damage to others by setting themselves up as English language schools and then not offering the right services.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, but does she agree that as well as controlling immigration, we should do more to ensure that those who settle here and integrate with us respect our culture, traditions and values, and make greater efforts to learn our language?
Mrs May
I think it is important for people who come to live here in the United Kingdom to be able to participate in society. That is why next week we are introducing an English language test for those who wish to come here to join a spousal partner. I think it only sensible for someone who is coming to live here to be able to speak English, and thence to participate in society.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the statement in general terms, but I do not believe that it goes far enough. There is still uncontrolled migration from the European Union, certainly to my constituency, into which have come a substantial number of unskilled and semi-skilled European workers who are undercutting the unemployed work force. What steps will the Home Secretary take to ensure that some curbs are placed on those people?
Mrs May
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. He has a record of having taken a rather different view from the Front Bench Members of his party when it was in government. As I have made clear and as the figures show, the vast majority of net migration is from outside the European Union. The flows into and out of the country of British and EU citizens balance out, and have done so for the past few years. As for the future, the Government have made it absolutely clear that if there are any new member states, we will exercise transitional controls.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend recognise that many British workers in the IT industry are very concerned about losing their jobs as a result of intra-company transfers? Can she reassure them that she will crack down on the abuse of the system that has been witnessed by some IT companies?
Mrs May
As I said in my statement and have said in response to a number of questions, we are tightening the rules relating to tier 2 entry to the United Kingdom, as well as those relating to intra-company transfers. We will ensure that those who come here really are the skilled and highly skilled workers who are needed. However, my hon. Friend’s point echoes one made by a number of other Members about the need to ensure that businesses in the United Kingdom seek the skills that are available here.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I should hate to misrepresent the Home Secretary. To avoid confusion, will she tell us whether she will reduce net migration to tens of thousands by 2015—or has she just dropped the Government’s specific commitment to that date?
Mr Speaker
I call Paul Uppal. [Interruption.] Order. I am quite worried about Opposition Front Benchers. They are in a state of quite extraordinary excitement, but I want to hear Mr Uppal.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Immigration cases take up most of the case load at my weekly surgery, particularly during the summer months, when the wedding season and many other family occasions take place. Will the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), consider pinning down responsibility for sponsorship when people come here to visit their families on such occasions? That would tackle head-on the problem of absconding, fraud and overstaying. The last Labour Government examined the matter when immigration was an issue, but they ducked it and chose not to do anything about it.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Will the Home Secretary say more about how she believes that the needs of particular sectors of the economy, and the pressures on them, can be properly respected and responded to within the new annual limits? Is a regional dimension built into any of the Government’s proposals? We know that before the election the Liberal Democrats spoke of huge regional issues relating to immigration. Does the new regime take any account of the needs of, and the pressures on, particular regions?
Mrs May
The proposals I am setting out today apply to immigration policy across the United Kingdom. To respond to the hon. Gentleman’s first point, I am confident that the needs of particular sectors will be met through our changes to tier 1, tier 2 and the intra-company transfer route. We have listened very carefully to business, and the CBI recently said it thought that
“a workable...solution would encompass…protection of sponsored work permit numbers as a priority ahead of those without a job offer”,
which we have done. The CBI also said that by
“prioritising the demand-led part of the system—Tier 2—in this manner the government will be able to deliver on its goal of reducing net migration without damaging business”,
which, again, is exactly what we have done.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I welcome the statement. Does the Home Secretary agree that the UK economy’s dependence on skilled labour from abroad highlights two of the starkest failures under the last Government: the promotion of welfare dependency, and the failure to improve skills and training?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it is important that we see the policies announced in the statement in the context of our welfare reform policy, the Work programme to be brought in next year, and the Business Secretary’s proposed skills agenda, which he introduced in a White Paper last week.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
During last Thursday’s immigration debate, the Home Secretary’s departmental colleague, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), said:
“We therefore aim to reduce net migration to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, each year by the end of this Parliament.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 1120.]
The end of this Parliament will, of course, be in 2015. May I offer the Home Secretary another opportunity to confirm categorically that that is still her Government’s policy this week?
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Returning to the issue of student visas, we have quite a few boarding schools in West Worcestershire, such as Malvern college, St Michael’s college in Tenbury Wells and Malvern St James college, which attract students from all around the world. They are highly trusted sponsors, but they are already finding that the system is slowing them down. Can the Home Secretary reassure these colleges that the process will become faster?
Mrs May
I am happy to give my hon. Friend that reassurance. While we are consulting on focusing the student visa route on universities, further education colleges and degree level courses, highly trusted sponsors will be able to offer courses at below degree level, and I would expect that the schools to which my hon. Friend has referred would be able to continue to offer courses because, as she says, they are highly trusted sponsors.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
Two months ago, UK executives at Toyota told me of the benefits for their company and the wider British economy of the transfer of knowledge and skills through intra-company transfers. Will the Home Secretary publish the economic analysis that I am sure she has performed of the impact on growth and output of restricting intra-company transfers of longer than 12 months to those on salaries of more £40,000?
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on having the grit and determination to introduce this important proposal. She rightly pointed out the kinds of abuse we saw under the previous Government in respect of programmes such as the student visa scheme, which meant that many people were here who should not have been. What measures are her Department taking to ensure that those who are here illegally are removed—and removed quickly?
Mrs May
We are considering the measures that could be taken against those colleges or so-called colleges that just enable students to come here to work and then stay on, rather than be removed. As I said in answer to a number of other hon. Members who raised this or similar issues, this Government are committed to strengthening our borders through the border police command within the national crime agency.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. I just hope that the consultations do not take too long and that the whole House will have an opportunity to debate all these issues in detail, probably with an immigration Bill. Given the rampant abuse of tourist, student, work and family visas, is it not time that an incentive is provided for those tempted to overstay or those who have overstayed by saying that they can return to their country of origin voluntarily or be barred from re-entering this country for at least 20 years? That would be an incentive that would work.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on this statement. The shadow Home Secretary has apparently admitted in the media that the Labour party, when in government, made a mistake in 2004 by not applying transitional controls to enlargement of the European Union then.
Michael Ellis
I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that such transitional controls will be applied to any further enlargements of the European Union?
Mrs May
I am very happy to give my hon. Friend that commitment on any future new member states entering the European Union. I am fascinated that the shadow Home Secretary stood up in response to my statement and claimed that the previous Government had introduced all these transitional controls, yet now we hear that he says they made a mistake in not doing this properly.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which will go a long way towards assuaging the concerns of my constituents. They are not so worried about business people being here for two or three years; they are worried about the permanent settlement that automatically seems to be granted when someone has lived here for four years. Can she give further assurances about the criminality aspect, because that is another great concern in my constituency?
Mrs May
We are indeed looking at the criminality criteria for entering in order to tighten them up; we want to look at people’s records when considering who can enter the UK. We think that that is an important element that we should be looking at, and I know that the issue has concerned a number of people.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Has the Home Secretary made an estimate of the number of sham marriages, particularly those to EU migrants to the UK? What further measures will she take to deter this and punish those responsible?
Mrs May
I do not have an estimate of the number of sham marriages, but I am happy to say to my hon. Friend that the UK Border Agency was very active in stopping sham marriages over the summer; we had a very big crackdown on them. Many people were concerned and surprised to see that a Church of England vicar was caught and arrested for helping sham marriages to take place.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Last and most certainly least, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Does she agree that, although the large-scale import of cheap labour may keep the lid on wage price inflation, it also keeps a lid on productivity because business men who feel that they can import cheap labour are less incentivised to be productive? Does she agree that that is not a competitive model and that the Government should not turn a blind eye to businesses that try to import cheap labour?
Mrs May
I have said in some of my conversations with businesses that it is important that they look to ensure that they encourage and provide the training for skills growth and development here in the UK. That is important, as it is in the UK’s interests, the individual’s interests and the interests of those businesses.
Mr Speaker
I must thank the Home Secretary and colleagues for their co-operation, as a result of which in 40 minutes of Back-Bench time we managed to get through 44 Back-Bench questions and answers. It shows what can be done when we put our minds to it.
Mr Speaker
Well, I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his unfailing support and I heard what he said.
Points of Order
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Of course, I commend your chairing. Given that we have just witnessed a U-turn on a U-turn, I am tempted to ask whether you might allow the Home Secretary to start again, but I fear that that might be ruled out of order.
On a more serious point, may I ask whether the Home Secretary contacted you today about the leak of her statement to the BBC? Did she explain why the statement was leaked to the BBC, and do you think it would be appropriate for her to explain to the House why the details of her statement were leaked to the BBC this morning?
Mr Speaker
I sometimes wonder whether these generous initial remarks are a ruse by Members to get me on their side, but I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I was not contacted by the Home Secretary about the matter to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but he makes his point with force and clarity. I am always concerned that the House should hear key announcements first. However, I would say that when different numbers are being bandied around that is sometimes a sign of a matter for debate rather than a point of order. However, I shall keep my eyes and ears focused firmly on these matters because the House must hear first.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you have more or less indicated, I think that the Home Secretary—
Mrs May
After 13 years in opposition, as the right hon. Gentleman will discover, one sometimes makes these mistakes. The information that the BBC had was wrong and I am happy to say to the House that any information on the BBC first thing this morning was nothing to do with the Home Office.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Home Secretary, and I am glad that we are not going to suffer an identity crisis for any length of time. I would simply say to the House that I think we will leave it there. We have had an exchange, concerns have been expressed and the Home Secretary has made her position clear.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
If the hon. Gentleman has a totally unrelated point of order, I am happy to hear it.
Pete Wishart
The BBC may or may not have got the Home Secretary’s statement, but the smaller parties most certainly did not get a copy of it in advance. The Government have been pretty good at getting statements to us recently. Will you ensure that the smaller parties, such as the Labour party, get a copy of the statement in advance of its being given?
Mr Speaker
In so far as I could fully hear the hon. Gentleman—I apologise if I failed to hear him, but there was quite a lot of noise in the Chamber—I would simply reiterate that there are certain requirements of courtesy on Ministers. Generally speaking, the requirements are complied with and I know that it is always the intention of Ministers to do so. Generally speaking, that happens and if it did not in this case, that was a mistake.
Mr Speaker
The Home Secretary nods assent to that proposition. I hope that such a mistake will not happen again.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) is insatiable today.
Ed Balls
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Having heard the Home Secretary’s remarks, I fully accept that it was not her or her Department who made this leak. I hear you saying two things from the Chair: first, that these leaks are undesirable and, secondly, that they are even more undesirable if people get the numbers wrong when they are doing the leaking.
Mr Speaker
The question of whether it was or was not a leak remains undetermined. All I can say is that I am Speaker of the House, but I am not Sherlock Holmes. Moreover, as usual, the right hon. Gentleman has used his ingenuity to put his point firmly on the record. If there are no further points of order, perhaps we can come to the ten-minute rule Bill, for which the promoter and some of his supporters have been eagerly waiting.
Grandparents (Access Rights)
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give grandparents rights of access to their grandchildren in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.
Although this might be entitled the Grandparents (Access Rights) Bill, it could just as easily be renamed the grandchildren’s rights Bill. If the Bill progresses, it will increase the rights of grandchildren to access their grandparents.
I want to thank many of the campaigners who were involved in this campaign, which has gone on for some time, including my predecessor as MP for Brigg and Goole, Mr Ian Cawsey, who moved a similar Bill a couple of years ago that was sponsored by you, Mr Speaker. A number of organisations are involved, including the Grandparents Association and I also want to draw on some of the work undertaken by the Centre for Social Justice. Above all, I want to pay tribute to my constituent, Dorothy Fagge, who has been a dedicated campaigner on this issue for a number of years, having twice been to court to access two different sets of her grandchildren. I shall talk about Dorothy’s experience in a moment.
Some 1.3 million families in England use grandparents as the primary source of care for about 1.8 million children, offering a saving to the taxpayer of about £4.8 billion a year given the average cost of child care. That would equate to a cost of about £92 million a week to the public purse.
The Grandparents Association estimates that about 1 million children do not see their grandparents because families have separated or lost touch. For me, the role that my grandparents played in my childhood and until they passed away was incredibly significant, and its value cannot be quantified. There is strong evidence regarding the value of grandparental involvement, particularly in the lives of adolescents, in reducing adjustment difficulties when marriages or partnerships fail. That was reported a few years ago in a national study, “Involved Grandparenting and Child Well-being”.
That view is shared not only by those who have an interest in this area and have campaigned on it, but by young people. A study that was quoted in the Centre for Social Justice’s family law and children report showed that 75% of young people said that a grandparent was the most important person, or one of the most important people, in their life. A sample of 1,500 young people showed that grandparental involvement in schooling and education is linked to lower maladjustment scores and fewer contact problems and that being able to talk to a grandparent is linked to their having fewer emotional and behavioural problems.
As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, before I came to the House I was a schoolteacher. I taught in a number of very deprived communities in Yorkshire and we sometimes found that grandparents were the sole point of contact in a child’s life, acting as an anchor or rock. Often, when all else around was failing, the grandparents were the only people left standing for that young person. Sadly, grandfathers are sometimes the only male role model many young people encounter.
The value of grandparents can never be underestimated. I cannot put that point better than Pam Wilson of the Grandparents Action Group UK, who has stated:
“Grandparents are a link to the past and a bridge to the future, for family history and medical details. To give a child a sense of belonging from the roots of their family.”
Similarly, Peter Harris who was formerly the Official Solicitor and is now with the Grandparents Association, has said:
“Grandparents are known to provide care for grandchildren more extensively than other relatives, and we believe that this puts them in a special category.”
I believe that grandparents should be placed in that special category.
Grandparents can face a number of legal problems, particularly when they have been denied access to their grandchildren as a result of bereavement or divorce. With bereavement, the surviving parent might find a new partner, which might involve the grandchildren being introduced to a new family. Over time, the family might move and grow ever more distant from the bereaved grandparents. With divorce and separation, the grandparents are often forced to take sides and it is human nature for them to side with their own child. That can lead to children being used as a weapon in particularly acrimonious divorces or separations. Access is often denied or, even worse, traded for financial reasons.
All that places grandparents in an incredibly difficult position. Currently, the law is not necessarily on their side. There is no automatic right for a grandparent to go to court to seek contact with their grandchild. In fact, they must seek the court’s permission to seek access through it. The process can be long winded and very expensive. This morning, I spoke to Lynn Chesterman of the Grandparents Association, who told me that the average cost of such a process is about £20,000. That option might be accessible for better-off grandparents, but there would be no possibility of those from more deprived or poorer backgrounds pursuing it.
My constituent, Dorothy Fagge, whom I mentioned earlier, was able to go to court and use substantial amounts of her own finances to gain access to her grandchildren, which had been denied to her in two different circumstances, one of which was incredibly tragic. Despite all her resources and her ability to pay for legal representation, it took her more than a year to gain access.
This is not an easy situation to address. I understand that, and there will always be cases in which contact with grandparents is not desirable, but the courts must determine that. However, I seek through the Bill some changes to the law to protect grandchildren in gaining access to their grandparents. I would like to see an automatic right for grandparents to seek contact through the courts so that they do not have to go through the double process of having to seek leave first. I hope that, through the review undertaken by the coalition Government, there will be moves to establish some form of early mediation to sort out contact issues, such as happens through the Australian family mediation centres.
It has also been suggested that there should be a presumption in law that children have a right of access to their grandparents, subject to the appropriate protections I mentioned earlier. One recent proposal, which is worthy of further investigation, is that children should have, at the very least, an automatic right to letterbox contact with their grandparents while proceedings in the courts are progressing. In the case of a bereaved grandparent, there is a strong argument that the grandparent, who is often the child’s only link to that side of the family, should inherit the right that previously existed for the parent.
I know that this is not an easy issue, and that the Government are already examining it through the family law review, which is due to report next year. As I said at the beginning of my speech, my grandparents were incredibly important to me. I know that for many people the role that their grandparents play in their lives is one that they value for the rest of their lives. It is appalling when grandchildren are used as a tool in divorce or in separation. That is why I would like to see implemented the changes that I have outlined, so that we can better protect the rights of grandparents and of grandchildren.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Andrew Percy, Tracey Crouch, Justin Tomlinson, Tom Blenkinsop, Mr Gregory Campbell, Karen Bradley, James Wharton, Greg Mulholland, Chris Skidmore, Martin Vickers, Mr Brian Binley and Craig Whittaker present the Bill.
Andrew Percy accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 June, and to be printed (Bill 110).
National Insurance Contributions Bill
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Before I call the Minister, I inform the House that Mr Speaker has not selected the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of the Opposition.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill before us consists of two parts. The first part introduces a 1% increase in the rate of national insurance contributions from April next year, as announced by the previous Government, although let me assure my right hon. and hon. Friends that we will reverse the impact of this jobs tax through an increase in the employer national insurance threshold. We have already announced the increase in the income tax personal allowance.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for giving way. What is the net impact on employers of the 1% increase offset by the increase in threshold? What is the impact on individual businesses?
Mr Gauke
Compared with the plans that we inherited, the impact of the increase in threshold will be such that employers will pay £3 billion less in employer’s national insurance contributions. The overall reduction of the burden on employment will be £6 billion as a consequence of the overall package.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm, however, that about £1.4 billion is not being compensated for by the threshold? I want us to be clear. He says that he has offset the threshold, but he has offset only about £3 billion, not the whole amount of the rise.
Mr Gauke
The fact is that the Labour party would have raised the full amount. We are offsetting £3 billion, which will be most helpful for employers whose employees earn under £20,000. The package is good for employment and, given the fiscal mess that we inherited, I am very proud that this Government are able to reform national insurance contributions exactly as we set out in our manifesto at the general election, and in the coalition agreement.
As far as we can deduce it, the Labour party’s position is that it wants to do more to reduce the deficit by raising taxation and it does not believe in increasing VAT, which will bring in £13 billion a year. We can assume only that it would favour greater increases in national insurance contributions than it had already set out.
We are not going to take any lectures; this Government have managed to reverse a very painful and damaging policy that would have meant employers’ contributions rising for every single employee paying national insurance—and in a way that would have damaged jobs in this country.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Minister aware that the proposals in the Bill discriminate against many areas—in London, in particular—with above-average unemployment? Will he explain to people in my constituency, where according to the Library there is already 6.6% unemployment, why on earth the national insurance contribution holiday does not apply to them?
Stephen Pound
That is extremely generous of the Minister. All I can say is that if he was surprised, imagine how I felt.
The Minister just gave the figure for receipts following on from the increase in VAT. Are his figures based on current patterns of consumption or on an anticipated level of consumption? Most economists would say that the VAT increase will depress demand and reduce consumption.
Mr Gauke
The sums are based on the assessment made by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility at the time of the Budget. I hope that that provides some clarification to the hon. Gentleman.
Part 1 of the Bill provides for changes, which the previous Government announced in two instalments, to national insurance contributions from next April. Initially, a 0.5% increase in rates was announced in the 2008 pre-Budget report. That was then changed to a 1% increase in the pre-Budget report of the following year.
I am sure that Members will remember that reversing the most significant impacts of those rate rises was a key issue at the general election. The Federation of Small Businesses said that the policy would cost 57,000 jobs. Thirty business leaders supported our campaign to reverse the policy. When the letter from those 30 business leaders—many other business leaders followed shortly—was published, Tony Blair apparently considered that for Labour the game was up. Thankfully, he was right, and we now have in place a Government who are determined to bring down the deficit but also to put in place conditions favourable to private sector-led growth.
In June, we announced our plan to reverse the most damaging aspects of Labour’s jobs tax. There was a choice how best to do this—for example, we could have cancelled the rate and threshold rises—but we have chosen the option that best protects low earners. In the emergency Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor confirmed that national insurance contribution rates would rise by 1%, that the personal allowance would increase by £1,000 from next April, and that the employer national insurance contribution threshold would rise by £21 a week plus indexation. The reform of employer national insurance contributions is exactly as set out in the 2010 Conservative party manifesto.
The Bill sets out how these rises will apply to the main rates of class 1 national insurance contributions. The employer rate will rise from 12.8% to 13.8% and the employee main rate will rise from 11% to 12%. The 1% increase will also apply to class 1A and 1B contributions that are paid on benefits in kind and pay-as-you-earn settlement agreements. The same 1% rise will apply to class 4 contributions paid by the self-employed, which will rise from 8% to 9%. Taking into account the increase in the personal allowances and employer threshold, the net effect of these changes will reverse the damaging £6 billion-a-year net increase in the cost of labour planned by Labour Members. Our package of measures entirely reverses this increase.
Compared with the plans that this Government inherited, no changes are being made to the rates. More than £3 billion a year is being returned to employers through the threshold increase, and even more to individuals through the increase in the personal allowance. Our actions will mean that some 880,000 low earners in the UK will be taken out of income tax altogether.
Mr Love
The hon. Gentleman mentions low earners. Of course, the thing that the Conservatives did not put in their manifesto was that they would raise VAT. They talked about national insurance being a tax on jobs, but is it not correct to say that the rise in VAT will destroy more jobs than the national insurance increase would have done?
Mr Gauke
No. We agree with the view of Tony Blair and, apparently, the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer that VAT is the right tax to raise if one wants to get a substantial sum of money. The hon. Gentleman will find that most economists take the view that in terms of the impact on jobs, increasing employers’ national insurance contributions is far more damaging than any increase in VAT.
As a result of the package of measures that we are putting in place, employees earning under £35,000 a year will pay less in income tax and national insurance contributions overall, and employers will pay less national insurance on employees earning under £20,000 a year. As well as the 880,000 low earners taken out of income tax, almost 1 million low earners will no longer pay national insurance contributions, while the number of low earners for whom employers pay no national insurance contributions will rise by about 650,000. It is also worth mentioning that people who will now be exempt from paying national insurance will retain the same entitlement to contributory benefits. However, tackling the deficit remains the priority, and the benefits to low earners could be achieved only through the increase in national insurance contribution rates included in the Bill. This decision is fair and progressive, and it will help to support the poorest and most vulnerable in society.
Let me turn to part 2 of the Bill. In the June Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced an employer national insurance contribution holiday for new businesses in countries and regions with a high dependency on the public sector. This holiday will apply across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and many regions of England—the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber, the west midlands and east midlands, and the south-west. Those areas have a higher proportion of jobs in the public sector than the rest of the country, and as we take the much-needed steps to rebalance our economy, it is vital that they benefit from additional support.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
There is no doubt that one welcomes this package of measures, which will help the lower paid in particular. However, will my hon. Friend revisit the Government’s decision to exclude businesses in the south-east from the national insurance holiday? Otherwise, it could be seen to discriminate against local entrepreneurs there and hit the areas that need higher employment.
Mr Gauke
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but the fact is that we have limited resources and have inherited a legacy in which the private sector is relatively strong in some areas, such as his constituency and mine, but much weaker in others. At a time when we cannot rely on massive public spending, and when the public sector will have to find economies, it is perfectly reasonable that we have adopted the approach of focusing on areas where there is high dependence on the public sector.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I am very supportive of the proposal in general terms, but when the Government came to their decision on it, did they consider extending it to existing businesses with very small work forces of one or two people as opposed to simply new starts, and did they consider what the cost of that might have been?
Mr Gauke
The focus of the policy has always been on start-up businesses. It is an attempt to encourage new businesses to be set up, given where we are in the economic cycle and the need to encourage private sector growth. That is why the Conservative party’s policy before the general election was focused on start-ups. After the election we considered how best to introduce the policy, and came to the view that we should include the regions where the private sector was at its weakest.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
If the scheme cannot be extended to an entire region, does the Exchequer Secretary accept that there will be pockets of that region, such as my constituency, that would benefit massively from it? The area has historically had very low new business start-up rates and would benefit from what I think is an excellent scheme. When I asked his Department about the costs of administering the scheme in such areas, it said that they would be prohibitive, but I cannot understand why that would be. Can he elaborate on that?
Mr Gauke
If we were to choose precisely where the policy applied on a much more closely defined geographical basis, we would have difficulties such as distortive behaviour, problems in enforcing the policy, the bureaucracy that may be involved, the need to establish where a company’s principal place of business was, and the difficulty of policing the scheme. Also, labour markets tend to be somewhat larger than constituency or even local authority areas. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the circumstances in Portsmouth, but there are neighbouring seats with a very low level of public sector employment and quite a high level of private sector employment. Such labour market flexibility can exist.
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
I take my hon. Friend’s points about the limited resources, the risk of bureaucracy and the difficulty of policing the scheme, but Robert Chote, while he was still at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, described the regional relief scheme as
“complicated…prone to avoidance and oddly targeted.”
I have had a number of representations to that effect. What assurance can my hon. Friend give that the scheme will not be accompanied by an enormous amount of extra regulation and a much higher compliance burden?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend raises a fair point. We are determined that in administering the scheme, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will adopt a light touch as much as possible. The problems of bureaucracy and avoidance would be much greater if we tried to drill down to constituency or local authority level as opposed to regional level. I assure him that our assessment is that gains for participating businesses will greatly outweigh any administrative costs that they may face.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
It occurs to me that this is a particularly prescribed aspect of the Bill with three particular areas identified. Will the Minister consider taking powers to himself that allowed him not just to exclude areas, but to keep a register of those he felt could be excluded, therefore allowing some flexibility? Should labour markets deteriorate markedly in certain areas, he could then revisit his decision and decide to support certain areas.
Mr Gauke
What we must bear in mind is that we have limited resources. If we were to extend this measure to every part of the country, the cost would increase by around 70%—in other words, £660 million over the course of three years. For the reasons that I set out, it would be difficult to drill this down to very precise areas.
Mr Gauke
I must make some more progress.
If we are to move to a model of economic growth founded on private sector enterprise and investment, it is important that we encourage the formation of new business. For that reason, the holiday applies only to businesses that have been set up since 22 June, the date of the Budget. To ensure affordability, the holiday is limited to the first 10 employees taken on in the first 12 months of business. For each of those workers, the holiday will last for a single year, unless the closing date for the scheme—5 September 2013—is reached before the 12 months is up.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I have listened very carefully to the Minister. Some 40% of the people in employment in my constituency work in the public sector. I represent some of the most deprived wards in London, which means some of the most deprived in the country, yet my constituency will be excluded from the holiday, whereas certain leafier parts, outside London and the south-east, will be included.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I welcome this measure. It is just the thing to spur on the private sector. In evidence to the Treasury Committee, Alan Clarke said that it was a “particularly encouraging measure”. Mr Whiting, of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, said that it was a
“worthwhile experiment for the small, new business with new employees.”
This is just the sort of measure to encourage the private sector that the House should be passing.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful for that intervention. We have to build this private sector recovery. This measure is a useful contribution, particularly to those regions where the private sector is not as strong as elsewhere. It is a transitional measure, scheduled to end in three years. We are committed to monitoring and evaluating its effectiveness over that period to ensure its success.
It is not our intention for this policy disproportionately to benefit businesses that employ highly paid staff. For that reason, the maximum amount that an employer can profit from any single employee is limited to £5,000. That cap ensures that the policy will not distort European Union markets and that it complies with state aid legislation. We do not expect any significant competitive disadvantage to arise either for existing businesses or for new businesses in regions where the holiday does not apply. The Bill also makes provision for the administration of this measure. Businesses benefiting from the holiday can withhold the employer contributions from the monthly payments they make to HMRC. If the payment cannot be withheld, the businesses can apply to HMRC for a refund. That will help to minimise employers’ costs as well as the costs of delivery.
The Government expect that hundreds of thousands of businesses will benefit from the measure over the next three years. In the Budget, we estimated that new businesses would save hundreds of millions of pounds worth of national insurance contributions during the lifetime of the scheme, giving them the ability to hire more staff, expand their business or invest in the recovery.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
The Government correctly emphasise the importance of the voluntary sector, and it is likely that there will be a surge in the number of charities that are set up. I declare an interest as a trustee of Stafford Works, which is a new charity. Will the Minister confirm whether charitable trusts and companies are included in the scope of part 2 of the Bill?
Mr Gauke
A charitable entity that is located in one of the relevant regions and that carries on a trade, vocation or business will benefit. That is likely to apply to, for example, shops that are run by charities. Such entities must meet that criterion to benefit, but not all charities will necessarily do so.
Mr Gauke
At this early stage, we have had around 1,000 applications, but we expect more as awareness of the policy becomes greater and as businesses contact their professional advisers. We are keen to publicise the policy, and I encourage hon. Members for any of the relevant regions to notify businesses in their areas. The Government and our policy aim to help businesses and those who want to start a business and get it going. In contrast, the previous Government increased such taxes. Start-up and existing businesses throughout the country faced rising taxes and employers’ national insurance contributions, which was a particularly deeply damaging tax.
The Bill is an important part of the Government’s plan to reduce Labour’s taxation, help those on the lowest incomes, and support private enterprise and employment in the parts of the country that need them most. It is a simple and important Bill, and I commend it to the House.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for his exposition of the Bill. We will test aspects of it in Committee and at other stages in its passage. As he said, it divides effectively into two parts. The first part is the increase in national insurance contributions by 1%, which we will support because we want to ensure that we protect services and support our economy. The second part introduces a three-year regional national insurance holiday for new employers. As the Minister said, many businesses will qualify for their first 10 employees in their first year of business; I shall return later in detail to the question of the regions and areas that will not qualify.
Let us first consider the national insurance contributions. The Minister rightly said that this policy was set out both in the Labour manifesto and elsewhere in the period before the general election in May. My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the then Chancellor, announced in the pre-Budget statement on 9 December 2009 that the previous Government would increase national insurance contributions by 1% to protect public services. We had a choice, and we were straight about it both before and during the election. Raising national insurance contributions was a tough decision, but we ensured that we would protect those earning less than £20,000 a year.
The Conservatives condemned that national insurance rise throughout the election, but—surprise, surprise!—they have now decided to go ahead with it. In the Conservative manifesto, which I have come to recognise is not worth the paper it was written on, the party committed itself to raising the thresholds for national insurance by £24 a week, the upper earnings limit by £29 a week, and the secondary threshold at which employers start paying national insurance by £21 a week. I look forward to seeing the details in the secondary legislation.
My intervention on the Exchequer Secretary showed that although the Government are raising the thresholds, there is still a shortfall of about £1.4 billion in employer national insurance contributions. The Labour party was open about that in the run-up to, and during, the general election, but the Conservative party was not. In my view, this is all smoke and mirrors.
Mr Gauke
Page 8 of our manifesto stated that we would
“raise the secondary threshold at which employers start paying National Insurance by £21 a week.”
The secondary legislation will increase the secondary threshold at which employers start paying national insurance by £21 a week, so we are doing exactly what we said in the manifesto.
Mr Hanson
But there were no caveats about a shortfall in the Budget proposals of about £1.4 billion. I think it is smoke and mirrors—and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) said, it is coupled with the increase in VAT from next year. The VAT rise will impact more than three times as much as the increase to national insurance contributions would have done, and will affect 250,000 jobs.
Charlie Elphicke
The right hon. Gentleman is right that the national insurance holiday will not apply in my constituency—a matter that I regret. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that 1,400 of the least well-off people in my constituency will be taken out of tax altogether. It seems that he opposes the increase in the personal allowance and would rather cut national insurance, which we originally planned to do. Instead, we are helping the least well-off. Surely he would welcome that.
Mr Hanson
I look forward to the hon. Gentleman going back to Dover to explain why he is supporting not only a Bill that does not give a national insurance holiday to his constituents, but the VAT rise elsewhere in the Budget proposals—we need to look at that in the round—which will impact on pensioners, the low paid and everybody in his community. This is not a topic for today, but the debate on the national insurance rise was open and honest on our side. During and after the election, the Conservative party argued against the rise, but it is now implementing it. On top of that, it is not meeting the objectives in its manifesto and has increased VAT. I think that a VAT rise is a regressive tax policy that will hit the poorest hardest, but that is the choice that the Conservative party has made.
I want to focus most of my remarks on the second part of the Bill. The decision to introduce a regional employer national insurance holiday is welcome, but it specifically excludes new businesses in Greater London, the south-east and the eastern region. We tabled a reasoned amendment that has not been selected, but which would have declined to give a Second Reading to the Bill because of those exclusions. I sense that the hon. Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who spoke earlier, will have expressed their concerns about how the choices on the national insurance holiday were made. [Interruption.] The Economic Secretary to the Treasury says that we would have increased national insurance contributions across the board.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We cannot have comments shouted across the Floor from a sedentary position. It makes it very difficult for Hansard to record our proceedings, particularly when the comments are then referred to without having been recorded. Will the hon. Lady make her point from the Dispatch Box, so that the right hon. Gentleman can answer it?
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
My point was that the Labour party would have increased NICs for absolutely everybody.
Mr Hanson
The hon. Lady knows that that was a clear and honest policy that we put to the electorate. The Government have now introduced proposals for a national insurance holiday for new businesses in certain regions. I will explore shortly why we think that that choice is unfair in the context of the resources the Government are trying to save.
Justine Greening
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether it is still his party’s policy to go ahead with those NIC rises?
Mr Hanson
I have said what I have said. We were open and honest during the election campaign, and we will support the rise proposed in the Bill, because we expected to do that. During the election campaign, the Economic Secretary and the Exchequer Secretary attacked the NIC rise without proposing the alternative that they have seen through in practice.
Let us put that aside, because the key issue before the House is the payment holiday. We do not believe that it is being proposed fairly, honestly or openly, and we do not believe that it will help the poorest and most deprived areas of the UK, which in great part are excluded from the scheme. Of the top 12 most deprived local authorities on the economic deprivation index, no fewer than seven will be excluded from the payment holiday. The seven boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Barking and Dagenham, Haringey and Lambeth are excluded from the scheme.
In his written statement on 6 September, the Exchequer Secretary said:
“The Government are determined that all parts of the UK benefit from sustainable economic growth”.—[Official Report, 6 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 1WS.]
If we are having a holiday from national insurance contributions, I do not understand how excluding those areas from the payment holiday will do that.
I want to challenge the Government’s logic. They claim that the reasoning behind the policy is that areas outside London, the south-east and the east are more reliant on public sector employment. Will the Exchequer Secretary confirm that that is his logic?
Mr Hanson
The Minister has confirmed that. Tomorrow’s business leaders who want to start businesses in the constituencies of Oxford East, of Luton North, of Lewisham East, of Canterbury, of Southampton, Test, of Eltham, of West Ham, of North Thanet, of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, of Tooting, of Islington North, of Dulwich and West Norwood, and of Brighton, Kemptown will miss out. I mention those constituencies specifically because they are in the top 10% in the country with the highest percentage of public sector employment.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are 650 constituencies. His policy is supposed to help compensate for possible loss of employment in the public sector. Those concerns have been reflected today, and I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Portsmouth North, for Meon Valley and for Basildon and Billericay, who have defended their constituencies and raised their concerns about how the policy will be applied.
If there is to be a holiday, it can be applied in different ways. It could be applied regionally, as the Minister has done, or on the basis of unemployment levels or regional levels of public sector employment per constituency, instead of the blanket regional approach that the Minister has chosen.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The shadow Minister has heard that rolling the scheme out across the entire country would cost an additional £660 million. Will he explain whether he would propose to raise that by increasing our deficit, by cutting expenditure—in which case what expenditure would he cut—or by raising taxes, in which case what taxes would he raise?
Mr Hanson
That is a fair and valid point. Yesterday, in reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister emphasised the cost of the scheme for the regions covered. My purpose today is to challenge the Minister’s logic for allocating the resources for the payment holiday to the regions that he has selected, because that distribution does not necessarily reflect the level of deprivation or public sector employment. The cake that the Minister has allocated may be sliced in several ways, but he has sliced it to exclude the constituencies represented by my hon. Friends in London and those who represent seats in the south.
Barry Gardiner
Is my right hon. Friend aware that Tottenham, which has the eighth highest number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants in the country, will not benefit, although Tatton, which has the 509th highest number of JSA claimants, will receive the NI break? Is that fair?
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. I do not begrudge the people of Tatton anything, and I will tell him why. I was once a Labour councillor in the Tatton constituency. I represented the ward of Rudheath and Whatcroft, and I was the leader of the Labour council that covered half the constituency at that time. I have absolute faith in those areas, but there is deprivation in Tatton. In fact, Neil Hamilton, a former Member of this House for that area, was my pair when I first came here. Such is life! But that is another story.
Tatton has one of the lowest levels of unemployment in the country. That constituency, which is represented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will get the benefit of the national insurance holiday to start 10 employees, but Portsmouth North will not. Neither will Brent North, Edmonton or Lewisham. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) will not get that benefit either—
Mr Hanson
Indeed, and neither will the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). We are talking about encouraging growth and promoting job opportunities, and how we split the cake is very important, as the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) has pointed out. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) mentioned the different figures for jobseeker’s allowance across the country. We need to address those significant differences.
Mr Love
For the record, unemployment in my constituency is about the 50th highest in the country, and my constituents want to know why they will not be getting the benefit of these measures in the Bill. The fallacy behind the Government’s argument is that the affluent part of the region will raise employment in my constituency, but all the evidence shows that there are hard-core pockets of unemployment, and that even during the economic good times over the past 13 years, unemployment there did not come down. The only way to address that fallacy is to apply the provisions of the Bill to all the regions of the country, as my hon. Friend suggests.
Mr Hanson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The question that the Minister needs to reflect on, here or in Committee, is how we should split the national insurance holiday cake. There are many ways of doing that, but his way is unfair to the areas of greatest need, to the areas with the highest public sector employment, and to areas that contain seas of prosperity as well as deprivation.
The Minister has mentioned areas of high public sector employment, but I have already shown him the fallacy behind his argument as it affects many of our constituents throughout the country. Figures for jobseeker’s allowance show that the rate of unemployment is currently higher in London than in the south-west, part of which is represented by the hon. Member for Central Devon, in North Wales, where my constituency is, or in Scotland, where it is 3.8%. Unemployment is also higher in London than in the east midlands or the north-west—[Interruption.] The Economic Secretary to the Treasury did not take your strictures to heart, Madam Deputy Speaker. She is continuing to heckle from a sedentary position. I would be happy to give way to her if she wants to intervene.
However we measure unemployment, the levels of jobseeker’s allowance claims in London are higher than in the south-west, Wales, Scotland, the east midlands and the north-west. Indeed, they are above the UK average. That is a key point when we are thinking about how to divide the cake up.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I must say that the enthusiasm being shown by the right hon. Gentleman, and by so many Opposition Members for this fantastic Conservative policy, or coalition policy, on national insurance holidays is absolutely heart-warming.
Mr Hanson
The hon. Gentleman will know that North West Leicestershire will benefit from the scheme, but I hope that he will look slightly beyond the confines of Leicestershire and talk to the hon. Members for Portsmouth North, for Meon Valley and for Basildon and Billericay, who have all expressed concern about the proposals.
Charlie Elphicke
I spoke on the subject of regionalisation in the Finance Bill, and we have to take the rough with the smooth. Does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the fact that in places such as Delyn, 500 new jobs have been created in the past six months? In Dover 500 new jobs have also been created in the past six months. Across the country as a whole, about 300,000 new private sector jobs have been created in the past six months. Does he not welcome that?
Mr Hanson
I think I know Delyn better than the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to come to me to talk to the 320 people who lost their jobs yesterday at Headland Foods in Flint, I should be happy to discuss the issue. That happened only yesterday in my constituency, so I will not take any lessons from him about what happens on my patch in north Wales.
I will tell the hon. Gentleman straight away, however, that West Ham has 6.8% unemployment, Tottenham 7.4% and Camberwell 6%. That is more than three times the level of unemployment in Tatton, in Richmond (Yorks), represented by the Foreign Secretary, and in Derbyshire Dales, represented by the Government Chief Whip. Indeed, it is four times the level in Sheffield Hallam, represented by the Deputy Prime Minister. All those areas will benefit from the scheme, while areas of severe deprivation in London will not.
Let us look at the constituencies of coalition Cabinet members. Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk has 2.8% unemployment, North East Somerset has 1.6%, Tatton has 2.1%—
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Hanson
In a moment. [Interruption.] Not North East Somerset. The hon. Gentleman knows that I meant the Defence Secretary’s constituency. I am sure that the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) will eventually make the Cabinet, however, because he is an assiduous attender of the Chamber.
Richmond (Yorks) has 1.8% unemployment, Derbyshire Dales has 1.6%, Rushcliffe has 2%, Sheffield Hallam has 1.8%, Sutton Coldfield has 2.6%, North Shropshire has 2.7%, and Inverness has 2.3%. All the Cabinet members representing those constituencies will benefit from the payment holiday, while colleagues representing seats in Walthamstow, Islington, Mitcham, Luton North, Luton South, Tottenham, Tooting, Dulwich, Streatham, Hampstead, Vauxhall, Hammersmith and the two in Hackney will not.
If we are to make the scheme fair, taking the point that the hon. Member for Central Devon made, we should divvy up the benefits that the Government are bringing forward in a way that tackles the central issues of deprivation and unemployment.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
We as a party welcome the initiative, and I am sure the Government will be happy to hear that. It is an important countervailing measure, and we need further such measures. Have the Opposition assessed how much it would cost to roll out the scheme as they suggest in their amendment, and how that would be funded?
Mr Hanson
If the scheme were applied to Greater London, the east and the south-east, and taken up at the level that the Minister expects, it would—according to figures that he gave me only last night—cost about £660 million. He says that there are about 1,000 interested companies to date, but I do not know what the take-up would be.
The cost could be offset by new employment and new taxes, because let us remember that the scheme under discussion is for new businesses, so the holiday period offset will be a cost to the Treasury, but it could be offset by increased growth, increased taxation paid by individuals who are employed and by the increased growth of businesses. The cost of the scheme downstream, at the end of the three years, is debatable, but, equally, there are ways in which we could divvy up the money that the Minister has allocated to the regions of Wales—one of which the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) represents—and all others. We could think about whether to divvy them up differently, so as to tackle areas of high unemployment in London or—if the Minister’s criterion is high public sector employment—areas with high public sector employment, such as those that I mentioned. They are in the 10% of areas with the highest such employment, and include seats that the current scheme will not cover.
Andrew Bridgen
Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his statement? Did he just suggest that we cut taxes to increase growth in order to increase the tax take overall? If so, I welcome the right hon. Gentleman as a believer in the Laffer curve.
Mr Hanson
The hon. Gentleman knows that the Opposition have a growth strategy. We had one prior to the election.
The measure under discussion has been proposed to give new businesses a national insurance holiday to help them with their costs for three years. The Minister estimates the costs for the three regions as £650 million to £660 million, based on the scheme’s anticipated roll-out in those regions. My simple point is that these are new employment jobs and new businesses, so they will presumably entail new employment areas and new people employed to fill them, who will pay new taxes. All that is part of the growth strategy, which will be hit hard by VAT increases and public spending cuts. That is a separate issue.
If we are thinking about a payment holiday, the question for me is whether it will achieve its objectives by being available in the areas of the highest public sector employment, or whether it will go to areas such as Tatton, Richmond or other wealthy areas of the north and midlands. In those areas jobs will be created, but the people who most need them will not be able to get them. That is the crucial issue for debate.
Without making a party political point of it, I would argue that Government Members have participated constructively both in previous debates on this subject and in today’s debate. John Walker, the chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses has said:
“With small firms in the South East most likely to be working below capacity, this shows how wrong the Government is to not include this vital region, as well as the East and London, in its proposals for a National Insurance holiday for start-up businesses.”
I have already said that we are not going to vote against the Bill—although if the reasoned amendment had been selected we would have voted for that. However, it is important both to consider the issue in the round and for the Minister to reflect on the concerns expressed, by his hon. Friends as well as by Labour Members, about the application of the national insurance holiday.
At the same time as implementing this Bill, the Minister is scrapping completely the regional growth strategy for different departments, and scrapping the regional development agencies and replacing them with local enterprise partnerships, which in my view will not help with regional development to the extent that we would want. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) has said that that sends out the wrong message about the work that has been done.
We need to look towards a better application of this policy, and the Minister needs to reflect further on the concerns expressed in our debate. Although we will disagree politically, I am most interested in ensuring that any national insurance holiday is of benefit to the people who most need it. Sadly, the Bill misses the mark in that respect, and fails to address those key issues.
I repeat that we will give the Bill a fair passage and not vote against it this evening. We welcome the rise in national insurance, which we too would have implemented. We welcome the holiday provisions as far as they go, but they need further reflection, so we will take every opportunity in Committee to try to persuade the Minister to look at more imaginative schemes, which might use the same amount of money in different ways, or extend the holiday to areas where it would be a valued resource and help reduce unemployment in the constituencies in the south-east, London and the east that most need that.
I hope that what I have said is helpful to the Minister. I look forward to spending the next few weeks in Committee with him, just as I have spent the last few weeks in Committee with him and his colleagues on various other Bills. To make a wholly non-partisan point, the Treasury appears to be one of the busiest Departments at the moment, and we are all having fun. I am sure that our discussions will shortly continue elsewhere.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I am not alone in finding that a rather disappointing response—an untypically disappointing response. Part 2 of the Bill introduces something that the Labour Government never introduced in their 13 years in power, yet the minute we introduce it, they say: “Well, it doesn’t really go far enough”. We have heard 25 minutes of “We want a better Bill, but we never backed it”. Labour has still not proposed to make this provision part of its own policy, yet it wants it extended to other parts of the country.
Unlike the Labour party I welcome part 2, comprising clauses 4 to 11, just as I welcome any reduction in the burden of taxation on small businesses, even if it is described—rather unfortunately, I think—as a “holiday”. Only in the weird and wonderful world of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs could the process of allowing a business to keep more of its own income and turnover be described as some sort of holiday. I rather regret that this phrase has now crept into the legislation. Small businesses pay too much tax, so anything we can do to reduce that burden has to be helpful. Why? Because the bulk of private sector job creation has come, and will continue to come, from small companies. Sadly, it is large companies that continue to reduce their costs, to strip out unnecessary manpower and to outsource various functions, while it is small businesses that have been, and will be, the engine of job creation.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Is not the main engine for job growth among small and medium-sized enterprises the expansion of existing SMEs rather than the creation of new ones, although of course that is an important engine as well? Does the hon. Gentleman favour the extension of the measure to new employees of existing SMEs? As he may know, and as I know from personal experience, starting a business involves a number of risks, and obviously this is one of the factors. An established SME could probably do much more with the “holiday”.
Michael Fallon
I was about to suggest that the measure might well be extended. It is true that job creation comes from existing small businesses, although it also comes from new ones. I think that we can find some common ground in that regard.
I have three main reasons for supporting the Bill. First, I believe that it is the right way to help small businesses. It is not the only way, but I do not think that the other ways that have been tried in the past—grants, loans, business link services, and a great deal of bureaucracy—are nearly as effective as allowing small businesses to keep more of their own money, and to employ more people more cheaply. Given that a Government cannot create jobs, this is the easiest, simplest and most effective way of encouraging businesses to take on more people.
My second reason for supporting the Bill, which is directly relevant to the intervention from the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), is that it is clearly future-proof. I note that the Opposition do not oppose it, either in principle or in detail; indeed, they want to extend its provisions throughout the country. If it turned out to be spectacularly successful—and none of us in the House knows yet whether it will—its provisions could be extended. At present, the scheme applies only for the first year of a new business, it is open for only three years, it applies only to the first 10 employees, and it applies only to the regions that we have been discussing.
If we discovered that the Bill really did encourage the creation of more jobs and did not divert employment from existing businesses, it would be perfectly possible—once the economy had recovered, we had closed off the deficit that we inherited, and more money was available—to extend the scheme in different ways. It would be possible, for example, to apply it to the first two years of a business. It can take longer than a year for a very small business to establish itself. It would be possible to keep the scheme open for the whole of the current Parliament, matching the reductions that are sadly necessary in public sector employment to encourage private sector employment alongside it. It would also be possible to apply it not simply to the first 10 employees but to, say, the first 20 or 30. I see nothing particularly magical about the step change involved in employing that 11th person. And yes, if the scheme really was working, it might well prove desirable and cost-effective to start extending it to some of the other regions. I note that the three excluded regions contain the south-east—my own region—East Anglia and London, which currently contain half the number of all our small businesses. If small businesses had already been successful in those regions, perhaps, if costs allowed, it might be possible to extend the scheme in four or five years’ time if it worked particularly well.
Stewart Hosie
The hon. Gentleman said that there was no step change between the 10th and 11th employees, and he was right. However, there is a huge step change for a sole trader taking on his or her first employee. Does the hon. Gentleman think that, if the scheme were rolled out in the way that he suggests, it should be rolled out to existing sole traders taking on their first employee, which involves a huge commitment?
Michael Fallon
I am not sure whether someone would remain a sole trader in those circumstances, but it is true that becoming responsible for someone else’s payroll is often the most difficult step for those who are self-employed or trading on their own account. I certainly think that we should explore that possibility further.
The third, and final, reason why I support the Bill is an entirely different one. The Bill is quite rare in that it recognises the rights of non-workers. I have never forgotten an encounter I had when I was representing a north-east constituency. It occurred at the height of the engineering recession of the early 1980s, when the jobcentre manager in Darlington said to me, “There’s plenty of work about, Mr Fallon, but very few jobs.” What he meant by that was, of course, that the labour market had fossilised. So many restrictions and costs were involved in hiring extra labour that it was too expensive and too risky for firms to take on more staff. Of course, the previous Conservative Government addressed that through a range of liberalisations that tackled areas such as employee rights, access to tribunals and restrictive practices, and I think that a Government need to do that every few years. They need to look again at the balance between those who are fortunate enough to be in the labour market and enjoying the various job protections that this House has given them successively over the years and those who are excluded from the labour market, because those who are excluded have rights too. If we make it increasingly difficult for companies to fire people, then we inevitably make it increasingly difficult for companies to hire people. If we build in unlimited awards for various types of discrimination—sexual discrimination, for example—we discourage firms from employing more women. There is a balance to be struck therefore, and I think that needs to be reassessed every few years.
Small businesses in my constituency tell me that at present they will do almost anything they can to avoid taking on new people, partly because of the difficulty of getting rid of them if they turn out to be unsuitable or unreliable or if they are not prepared to work hard enough, and partly because of the administrative costs piled on them by the last Labour Government through, for instance, needing to check student loan repayments, child care reliefs and immigration status. When we consider measures such as those in this Bill, we need to be thinking all the time about how we can make it easier for businesses to employ people.
This is a short Bill, and it would be wrong to overstate its effects. It must be considered in the context of the other measures to help small businesses, such as the reduction in their corporation tax rate, which I welcome, and the extension of the guarantee scheme. I suspect that the Bill will prove to be successful however, and, if so, I hope that it will be the start of a much wider and deeper process of removing the barriers to growth, such as the thicket of regulation our small businesses have to struggle through and the heavy burden of taxation that still inhibits too many of them. I welcome the Bill.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
I wish to concentrate on the situation facing my constituents and many others in London. The House of Commons Library has published a note that is of great help to all who take an interest in the subject of today’s debate, and it says that, on the basis of International Labour Organisation measures of unemployment, the highest rates are in London, the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber, where the figure is 9%. However, although the north-east and Yorkshire and the Humber are to benefit from the measures in question, London is entirely excluded.
As has already been made clear, a number of boroughs and constituencies in London have very high levels of deprivation and unemployment. My borough, the London borough of Redbridge, does not feature as one of the most deprived boroughs overall, but there are wards within it, including three in my constituency, that are in the lowest decile for deprivation and need. Therefore, the impact of any changes that discriminate against Londoners, against small businesses in London and against ethnic minority businesses in London—the population distribution in this country means that London has a much greater concentration of people from all ethnic minorities—has to be borne in mind. These proposals are inherently discriminatory; they are discriminatory in their own terms and they therefore need to be seriously questioned.
The Federation of Small Businesses has sent me some information about this matter. It points out how more than half the firms in London, 64% of small businesses in the south-east and 58% of firms in the east of England are likely to operating under capacity. It states that the regional discrimination involved in these proposals is based on
“a crude assessment as it does not account for areas within these regions that would really benefit from policies that would help bolster employment.”
If the FSB opposes the proposals, why on earth are the Government not listening to it, given that they claim always to be listening to small businesses? As I speak, the Essex FSB is having a meeting, which I am obviously not able to attend, and one of the issues it will discuss is precisely this discrimination against the east of England, the south of England and, in particular, London.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
The point needs to be made that the Minister has explained that a significant extra cost would be involved in making this a national programme. As the Member of Parliament for Watford, an area that faces significant unemployment problems, I would say that it would be very nice to have this programme, but the Minister has explained that the cost involved would be more £660 million. I am pleased to see this principle being used, because I believe that selective regional policy can be used in the future. I hope that the Government’s localisation agenda will mean that holidays and similar tax benefits for rates will be extended to specific areas. But for the moment, because of the mess that the Labour Government left us with—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. Interventions are supposed to be brief.
Mike Gapes
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman should perhaps make his own speech, rather than intervene on mine.
The FSB makes clear its concern about not only the regional variation, but the fact that the proposals do not deal with existing firms. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) also made that point from the Front Bench. The FSB says that
“surveys have found that 57% of small businesses without employees would like to employ in the future, which could create…800,000 new jobs”.
It also points out that many small businesses do not survive for more than two or three years, so by discriminating against existing small businesses that have just been established the proposals are another difficulty for that sector. The FSB claims that, on average, its 213,000 members each employ seven members of staff and that most employ five or fewer. It points out that if they were able to get the support that is being made available only to certain businesses in certain regions, there would be the potential for much greater assistance. Therefore, the essence of the proposals is that if the Government are going down this route, they are doing so in a way that discriminates against certain regions and certain communities in the country, and that discriminates between different businesses.
The essence of the proposal, we are told, is that we are all in this together but, sadly, it is yet another example of where we are not. We are all in it together, but we are not all getting the assistance to deal with the problems that the Government will create when they slash the public sector.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate and I offer my wholehearted support to the Government for this excellent Bill.
On part 1 and the increases in rates, a point that has not been made but that is worthy of comment concerns the timing. Opposition Members had considered the increase when we were at a flaky stage in the recovery of the economy and when there was concern that there might be a double-dip recession. To move the timing from June of this year to April of next year is to be commended and it is absolutely the right and responsible thing to do.
My speech will focus principally on part 2 and the so-called “holiday” for new businesses, a provision that I wholeheartedly support. It is absolutely right that new businesses should be given a helping hand, particularly now. I am fortunate that my constituency of Newton Abbot is in Devon and therefore in the south-west, which means that my new businesses will benefit from these new measures. The Government estimate the benefit across the country at £940 million. That is well worth having and I am delighted to see Opposition Members supporting it. The cost in the grand scheme of things is relatively small and the administration costs of £12 million can be set against the overall administrative costs for this tax, which stand at £1.54 billion. The estimated benefit for individual businesses will be £2,000 per business with a rough administration cost of £166. That strikes me as very good value for money.
I want to take up a point that has been made by a number of Members on both sides of the House. In my view and, clearly, that of others, micro-businesses desperately need help. In the south-west, 91% of businesses employ only five people—small businesses that are a large part of the business community. In my part of the world, issues will arise because of the changes to the public sector, so helping micro-businesses will be very important because it is more likely than not that, because of their sheer number, they will take on those who are made redundant and the NEETs, as we call them—those not in employment, education or training—who clearly need a helping hand.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the hon. Lady realised that the proposed holiday does not apply to existing small businesses?
Anne Marie Morris
I thank the shadow Minister, but that is precisely my point. I would like to ask the Treasury and the Treasury team to extend the provision to those businesses in the fullness of time.
In particular, we should clarify what we mean by a micro-business. The European Union defines it as a business with 10 employees and a turnover of less than £2 million. For my money, that is a very big business. In my part of the world, micro-businesses are really very small. The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who is no longer with us, suggested that we might think about a small business of two employees that was considering adding one extra employee. The point was that it is a big step for a sole trader or husband and wife team to take on that extra member of staff, and it is there that we need the help.
I suggest that the Treasury urgently considers extending the provision to micro-businesses, not in this Bill but in a future Budget. I cannot see why micro-businesses should not be covered across the country rather than in regions. My plea is that micro-businesses, which are different to small businesses, should be properly represented and that we should consider what we in this Parliament mean by a micro-business rather than necessarily taking the European definition. We should also consider what help we can give them.
As for the point made by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), it is not just about tax assistance, but about regulatory assistance. Some very small businesses are drowning in legislation, much of which is simply not appropriate for them.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points, which, as someone who used to own a small business, I recognise. Micro-businesses also have the opportunity to take on apprentices, and we should encourage small businesses to take advantage of that.
Anne Marie Morris
I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution and I absolutely agree.
I ask the Treasury team and the Minister, after the successful outcome of this measure, urgently to consider extending it in the next Budget to micro-businesses and to introduce a proper definition of a micro-business. I think that they need particular help and support.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I want to make only a brief speech and, like some other speakers, plan to limit my remarks to part 2 of the Bill, which deals with the national insurance holiday for businesses that start up outside London, the east and the south-east.
A national insurance holiday for some new businesses but not others is misguided. I have two main reasons for believing that. First, there is the basic issue of fairness. Under the Government’s proposals, a new business setting up in Leamington Spa, for example, could benefit from savings of up to £50,000 in its first year of operation, but the very same business starting up in my constituency of Lewisham East would get nothing. The businesses might be exactly the same and they might employ exactly the same number of people and have exactly the same turnover and profit margins, but one stands to get a kick-start of thousands of pounds in its first year and the other does not. I cannot help but think that that is blatantly unfair.
New businesses in Lewisham struggle to survive at the best of times: only 59% are still operating after their first three years as opposed to a UK average of 65%. If we add into the mix the state of the economy in Lewisham, we see that the policy seems even more misguided. The claimant count in my constituency has risen by 2% in the last year, whereas in Leamington Spa it has fallen by 25%.
The shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), has already spoken about what the policy is meant to do. The stated aim of the payment holiday is to encourage the creation of private sector jobs in regions that rely on public sector employment. Presumably, that is an attempt to do something to offset the huge job losses that the Government are choosing to inflict on councils, police forces and primary care trusts up and down the country. So, one might be forgiven for thinking that the policy would apply to those areas that have the highest proportions of their work force employed in the public sector. One might think that the holiday would apply to the same areas as those that are eligible to bid for the Government’s new regional growth fund, but, no, that would be a logical step. Instead, the Government have decided to exclude London from their national insurance holiday and thereby exclude many communities that are highly dependent on public sector jobs—the very communities that are grappling with the uncertainty that the Government’s approach to public services has created.
Let us take as an example the area I represent in south-east London. The public sector accounts for 38% of all jobs in Lewisham, a figure that is 11% higher than the national average. If we take the boroughs of Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth and Croydon together, we realise that the public sector work force amounts to 185,000 people, significantly more than the public sector work force of the whole of Tyne and Wear.
Lewisham also has more people chasing local jobs than almost anywhere else in the country. In October, there were more than 587 vacancies in Lewisham compared with 9,475 jobseeker’s allowance claimants. Let me again compare the situation with that in north Warwickshire, where there were 1,507 vacancies in October and 1,018 people looking for work. I accept that the labour market works very differently in London from elsewhere, and I am all for people getting on their bike, the bus or the train to get a job. Indeed, that is what most of my working constituents do every day. However, the fact that Lewisham has more people chasing local jobs than virtually anywhere else in the country says something very important about people’s experience when they go to the jobcentre in my constituency. For every job in Lewisham there are 16 people claiming JSA. Every week, without fail, I have someone asking me to help them in their search for work. These are not workshy individuals, but people who desperately want to get a job to provide for their family. The jobs are not there at the moment.
By not providing the same concessions to businesses in Lewisham as to new businesses elsewhere in the country, the Government are effectively limiting the prospects for my constituents who want to find work. Let us not forget that even in London it is necessary to stimulate employment in the sub-regional economy. Public sector jobs are often local to where people live, so mums and dads who face being made redundant by local councils will be keen to find local work that will fit around their caring responsibilities. Why are the Government intent on making it harder for them to find work in new private sector enterprises by excluding London start-ups from the national insurance concession?
Lewisham is part of London but its streets are not paved with gold. This is where the Government have gone wrong. Not all London is like Notting Hill. Yes, London has the City and is home to Canary Wharf, but it also has some of the most desperate examples of poverty in the UK. One in five Londoners earns less than a living wage and in inner London 20% of the population has 60% of the total income. The worst-off of the richest 10% of Londoners have wealth 273 times greater than that held by the best-off of the poorest 10%. The fact that London is home to the country’s major financial centres should not mean that my constituents are disadvantaged or that if they want to set up a business, they are treated as second-class entrepreneurs. It should not mean that hundreds of people who are fearful of losing their job in the public sector should have a lesser chance of getting a job in a new business start-up because of where they live.
In London, we know that an axe has been taken to the London Development Agency and that councils across the capital have lost local authority business growth incentives scheme money, which many ploughed back into supporting local businesses. We also know that the VAT increase will hit many small businesses very hard. Now, to add injury to insult, the Government want to support new businesses only in other parts of the country. That is not fair, it is misguided and I urge the Government to think again.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
I am delighted to contribute to this important debate. It is essential to assist economic recovery by incentivising entrepreneurship and private sector-led growth and I make no apologies for supporting the coalition Government’s focus on encouraging our small and medium-sized businesses, which this Bill does in abundance. The Bill’s benefits are threefold. First, it will contribute to the Government’s wider economic recovery programme through a small increase in national insurance contributions. Secondly, it will promote and support small businesses and entrepreneurship. Thirdly, it will fulfil the coalition’s pledge to raise the threshold of income tax personal allowance.
Like other hon. Members, I shall focus my contribution mainly on the second of those benefits—the so-called national insurance holiday for small businesses. First, however, it might be useful to take stock of the history of NICs. This form of taxation was introduced in 1911 before being expanded in 1940 to help fund the national health service. The scheme has always consisted of benefits financed by contributions from earners, employers and others. NICs have always been flexible and responsive to the wider economic situation and thus linked to the ever-changing needs of society. Given the wider economic outlook and the appalling financial legacy that we have inherited, it is absolutely right that we now consider increasing these rates. However, as a low-tax Conservative, I hope that the actions we take to repair our broken economy today will be replaced with lower taxation policies across the board in future.
Turning to the scheme’s main benefits, I am absolutely delighted that the Government have already taken measures to make Britain a more business-friendly country once again. The Bill adds to the welcome return to promoting and encouraging entrepreneurship rather than suffocating businesses with endless regulation and red tape, as sadly occurred too frequently in the previous decade. By raising NICs, we will encourage the creation of private sector jobs in regions that are too reliant on public sector employment by reducing the cost of employing staff in new businesses.
NICs will be abolished for the first 10 jobs created in new start-up enterprises during the first 12 months of the business. As we have heard, the exemption will be available for new businesses within a three-year qualification period. Such measures will save businesses vital cash, thereby encouraging further growth and new employment opportunities, which are vital at this time. Early forecasts suggest that about 400,000 employers will claim the holiday, covering 800,000 employees. The average benefit per business will be about £2,000, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) has mentioned. The total cost to the Treasury is estimated at about £940 million.
Barry Gardiner
The hon. Gentleman will know that the October 2010 claimant level for JSA in his constituency was 901, but the figure for my constituency was about two and a half times that. Why does he think that his constituency and his benefit claimants should benefit from the holiday period while mine should not?
Julian Sturdy
I think that the hon. Gentleman is talking about the regional aspect of the measures, which is important and has already been raised by some Members. I shall address that issue and if he wants to intervene on me again, I shall be more than happy to take his intervention.
As we appreciate the cost of the scheme to the public purse, it is only right to drill down into the specific details. There are many concerns about the holiday provision not applying to three English regions—Greater London, the south-east region and the eastern region. I accept that this limitation might seem unfair, particularly to those right hon. and hon. Members who represent such areas, but we live in extremely difficult economic times and the woeful financial legacy will limit our ability to extend the holiday relief to every part of the country. That is regrettable, but it is a fair compromise. It is well-known that the gap between the northern and southern economies is widening and has been for the past 13 years, so it is essential that the coalition focus on closing the gap by encouraging new private sector-led growth in the north.
An unhealthy dependence on the public sector has blighted many northern towns and cities for too long. Alongside the creation of local enterprise partnerships and the regional growth fund, it is essential that private enterprise be given a boost in northern cities—such as mine, York, I confess. Economic recovery will take place only if the private sector leads the way. Only private sector expansion in the areas that are most dependent on the public sector will ensure that the recovery leads to sustainable, long-term stability in local economies. Sustainability is key.
I am sure the holiday aspect of the Bill will be welcomed by many small businesses throughout the country. It has already won the backing of the Federation of Small Businesses. I know that Opposition Members say that that is not the case, but I believe it is, although the federation raises concerns about the length of the relief and the number of firms to which it will extend. Although my support for the Bill remains unequivocal, I must confess that I share some of those concerns, while understanding the financial constraints placed on the Government.
I fear that we might be slightly short-sighted in limiting access to expansion to new firms alone, and in allowing new firms to claim it only during the first year of their business operations. I admire the way in which the coalition has governed thus far with a long-term prospect. I ask the Front-Bench team to review through the same visionary lens the time scales and business exemptions from the contributions holiday over the course of the next year or when the financial position allows. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot raised that point, referring to micro-businesses, and I agree wholeheartedly with her comments.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that the Bill sends out exactly the right message from the Government to budding entrepreneurships. This is positive Government-led action that our small and medium-sized businesses will welcome. More broadly, this action must be supplemented by Britain’s banks. Put bluntly, too few small and medium-sized businesses are receiving flexible finance. Members in all parts of the House should unite in urging the banks to free up vital cash flow. The new emphasis on bank lending, alongside the measures contained in the Bill, will ensure that our private entrepreneurs receive practical assistance in a true time of need.
The Bill will play a vital role in our economic recovery and future growth, and I will strongly support it.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Exchequer Secretary commended the first part of the Bill by saying that it was fair, that it was progressive and that it supported the poorest in society. In so commending the first part of the Bill, he damned the second part, because he could not say that the second part of the Bill was fair, progressive and supported the poorest in society. That is the essence of the Opposition’s argument this evening.
The second part of the Bill is incoherent in principle and in practice and, worse than that, it is ineffective in practice. Let us look at the fundamentals. Who is it that leads us out of recession? I am happy to make common cause with Members on the Government Benches and say that it will be the private sector, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises, that will lead us into the growth that this country badly needs. Why is it, then, that the holiday provision is given precisely in those areas where private sector growth has been proven year after year not to take place?
We know, and it has been a cause of problems to us, that it has been in London and the south-east that small businesses set up and grow. That has been the engine of the private sector in our economy, yet instead of seeking to use that to advantage, the second part of the Bill is incoherent in principle because it denies that region the holiday and because it denies those potential businesses the benefits that will be made available in parts of the country that have been proven not to be able to utilise them, and therefore not to be able to bring us out of the recession and be the engine of growth that we all want.
The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) made the point that to extend the holiday to London and the south-east would cost £660 million. Of course, there will be a cost to the scheme, wherever it is put in place, but presumably that cost is seen as an investment to achieve the growth and dynamism in the economy that will return that investment multiplied to the Exchequer. Yet £660 million is not being invested in the very parts of our country where we know from experience that the private sector is most likely to give the maximum returns to the public purse. That is incoherent.
Now let us look at whether the measure is incoherent in practice. The Budget documentation quoted in the explanatory notes to the Bill states:
“The Government’s strategy to support private sector enterprise in all parts of the UK aims…to encourage the creation of private sector jobs in regions reliant on public sector employment, through reducing the cost to new business of employing staff”.
Yet we have heard this evening that that is not the case. There are parts of London and the south-east that are far more reliant on public sector employment than parts of the country that will receive the benefit from the holiday. That is incoherent and wrong.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) made the pertinent point that the Bill was unfair in another respect, and one can only marvel at that unfairness coming from the Conservatives. The unfairness is that the Bill is anti-competitive. My hon. Friend presented the straightforward example of two companies alike in all that they do, except that one will get a £50,000 benefit in its first year of operation which is not available to the other—and that from the party which believes in free markets and in abolishing anti-competitive practices? How can those on the Treasury Bench put that forward as a coherent philosophy?
Mel Stride
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the purpose of the holiday, as we are calling it, is to try to compensate for a reduction in the size of the public sector in certain parts of the country, rather than targeting it specifically, as he and other Opposition Members seem to be suggesting, at areas of higher unemployment?
Barry Gardiner
The hon. Gentleman suggests that what the Government are seeking to do is compensate in some way for the decimation that they believe they will cause to employment in those areas. We share a belief that the Government’s cuts will have that decimating effect on employment in those areas. Where we differ is that the hon. Gentleman believes that the measures will in some way compensate for that, whereas I am pointing out that in other parts of the country, precisely in those areas where they are not to apply, they would have a greater effect in boosting the economy.
The hon. Gentleman may say that the measures will have a marginal effect in mitigating the increases in unemployment which he knows will come from his Government’s policies. I do not believe, and I am confident that he does not believe, that they will totally compensate for those. But the most important thing is to get our economy moving again; after all, that is why we are making those public sector cuts in the first place. If we are focused on economic regeneration, we must seek to make that investment where we know it will achieve the maximum return.
Justine Greening
Can I get this clear? Is the hon. Gentleman saying that Government should not try to help regions that need infrastructure improvement and are currently less productive? Should we simply not invest in them?
Barry Gardiner
I try to keep debate in this Chamber at a rational and reasonable level. I try not to play silly party politics or create a straw man simply so that I can knock it down. If the hon. Lady wishes to play those games, let her intervene on somebody else. It is really puerile to start talking in those terms; she knows that that is absolutely not my purpose at all.
The hon. Lady should consider her policies—not only these, but those that relate to VAT—and the effects that the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has said they will have. John Philpott, the chief economic adviser to the CIPD, said just a few days ago that:
“we are looking at something like 900,000 job cuts in the private sector as a result of both spending cuts and the VAT hike.”
That will be the effect of the hon. Lady’s policies. Of course I want that effect to be mitigated as far as possible, and for her to intervene on me in that ridiculous way, asking whether I am suggesting we should not try to mitigate the effect of her own policies—the loss of 900,000 jobs —is ludicrous.
In contrast to the hon. Lady, the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) was extremely reasoned in responding to my intervention on him. He accepted that there was unfairness in the Bill and that that unfairness was “regrettable”. My point is that although it is regrettable, it is not inevitable. We do not have to cut the cake or make the investments in this way.
In a rather partisan speech, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) derided my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). He said that my right hon. Friend was suggesting that the Government were not going far enough. It is not a matter of not going far enough with the holiday; it is a matter of the Government’s being fair, equitable and effective. The Government cannot and should not take these decisions in an arbitrary fashion; they should take them on the basis of equity and effectiveness. The Bill does not enable that.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) referred to the regrettable consequences of Government policy in terms of unemployment. I believe that, in large part, the entire Bill is regrettable because it introduces rises in national insurance for employers and employees, on businesses, at a time when we look to them for growth, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out. But the reason for that is the policies pursued by the previous Government. Because of the hour, I do not intend to rehearse those this evening, save to point out that we have ended up in a situation where the interest alone on the money that we owe is £43 billion a year—more than we spend on education and defence. That is a national disgrace.
I welcomed my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s Budget of 22 June, particularly the balance that he struck between seeking reductions in expenditure and accepting that we have to raise certain taxes. He weighted it far more towards the former than the latter, which has to be the right policy. The hon. Member for Brent North is right: the Office for Budget Responsibility itself has said that 500,000 jobs will be shed as a consequence of the fiscal consolidation in the public sector, and PricewaterhouseCoopers has suggested that perhaps another half a million private sector jobs will go as a consequence of that. We need to create jobs in the private sector.
According to the Treasury, in the past six months 300,000 jobs have been created in the private sector, so the capacity is there. It was as inevitable as it was regrettable that national insurance would go up. Labour first started talking about increases in national insurance as far back as the latter part of 2008. Of the three major taxation streams going into the Treasury, national insurance is the second most significant. In fact, in 2009-10 £150 billion was raised from income tax, £96 billion from national insurance and £70 billion from VAT. National insurance is efficient to collect, and in 2011-12 we will raise £9 billion as a consequence of the increases. In my opinion and that of many economists, the rise was totally unavoidable.
I wholly welcome one aspect of the Bill—well, not so much the Bill but the secondary legislation that will be enacted later—and that is the increase in the threshold for employers’ national insurance to £21 per week above indexation. I welcome that because it will take some of the pressure off our employers.
National insurance, however, is not a good tax; as we know, it punishes those who employ people rather than taxing the earnings from straightforward investment, which does not employ people. I urge the Government’s Front Benchers to make sure that, when the recovery gathers pace and we start to get the deficit down, national insurance for employers and employees should be right at the top of the list of taxes that we seek to reduce.
I welcome the national insurance holiday, about which much has been said in this debate, and particularly its targeting of new businesses. It should reach about 400,000 new businesses and about 800,000 new employees. I say that as somebody who set up his own small business, starting from scratch 20-odd years ago, and built a company both here and in the United States. One of the most important and fragile moments of a company’s growth is that very starting point; that is when a company is most vulnerable. The help will be hugely welcome.
To my horror, I have found myself being slightly persuaded by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as he started to open up the discussion about whether the holiday should apply across the entire country or whether, as I think he was suggesting, it might be applied in a different way, to pick up areas in the south-east, Greater London or the eastern region that might value the help more than other parts of the country. I would like to think that Government Front Benchers might think about that aspect a little further, although I suspect that when we start to try to cherry-pick small parts of the country, we will end up with a highly complex and potentially very expensive scheme. However, I would like to think that we might consider the matter in Committee.
I also welcome the fact that this is retrospective legislation that applies to companies set up since the emergency Budget in June, and that it is not prescriptive in the sense of requiring a certain type of employment in order for companies to qualify. There was a scheme in the 1990s to get the long-term unemployed back into work that was not nearly as successful as it might have been had it not been so prescriptive.
I am pleased that the Government, in recognising the importance of business, also set out in the Budget reductions in corporation tax in steps from 28% down to 24% over the period of the comprehensive spending review, with the small business rate falling to 20%. That will give us one of the lowest levels of corporation tax in the G20, and the fifth lowest in the G7.
I have some concerns about the national insurance holiday. We must ensure that we avoid so-called recycling whereby, for example, companies set themselves up as apparently a new business although they have been operating before, or come into the market as a new business and then close down and rebrand themselves. I note that clause 5 deals with that issue. My plea is that we do not make the whole operation unduly onerous and complicated for businesses that wish to take advantage of the scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) spoke in particular about the importance of keeping complexity down. The tax code in this country now runs to 11,000 pages. We have enough complexity—we do not need more.
The Bill also deals with EU regional funding constraints. Under articles 107 and 108 of the treaty on the functioning of the EU, companies are not permitted to receive more than €200,000 in state aid over a three-year period, given the regionality of the way the scheme works. Clause 8 seeks to handle that. Again, it is imperative that whatever information HMRC requires from those companies is kept to the minimum so that the system is not bogged down in red tape.
Chris Leslie
Has the hon. Gentleman had an opportunity to look at the regulatory impact assessment describing the steps necessary to implement the NI holiday, which is estimated on the Treasury’s own figures to cost £22 million? A lot of companies will have to use manual processes instead of the software that they had used to pay their national insurance, and it will require 240 extra staff at HMRC to administer the scheme.
Mel Stride
The hon. Gentleman adds to my point. Indeed, I believe that the cost to HMRC will be £12 million, and the cost imposed on business is estimated at £75 million. I accept that that is a large amount of money in the context of a scheme that is effectively injecting £940 million. It is therefore most important that we keep complexity and red tape to an absolute minimum.
It is important to ensure that this incentive is well advertised, given that it is permissive in allowing companies to apply for it but is not necessarily automatically granted. The HMRC material refers to advertising it on Business Link websites, and so on. If we are to get up to 400,000 businesses involved—1,000 are involved at the moment—we will have to advertise this nationally with a push to ensure that it is taken up. In particular, we need to ensure that we lower the proportion of so-called dead-weight businesses that are taking it up—in other words, those that would have employed additional people even in the absence of the scheme. It is really important that we give this a wholehearted push.
I welcome the national insurance holiday provisions in the Bill. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) that it is important to consider other aspects such as encouraging lending and getting the Bank of England issuing credit condition surveys in which it talks about the banks lending again. We also need to cut back on red tape. This is a big opportunity to get back to a culture that is positive about new business. I should like us to have the kind of culture that we had in the 1980s, when we were open for business and companies were being set up. That is when I went out there and set up my business and created wealth and employment for people. That is the aspect of the Bill that I wholeheartedly welcome.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I have always been a very practical person. I ran my own successful business for some 25 years before handing the work over to my son. I am the first to acknowledge that in order to spend money one must have money coming in as well, because if one does not have that, one does not have a business. I live in the real world in the area that I represent, with unemployment and bills, and with families struggling and businesses barely surviving. I fully grasp the very tenuous financial position that we find ourselves in as we try to claw our way out of the deficit. I accept that Government, the coalition, and all of us together have to be involved in that and make a contribution towards it.
I welcome the range of packages that the coalition has brought forward through the Bill, which will directly help the lower paid. That is positive, and I am glad to see it. The national insurance contribution holiday is also a positive move. However, I feel that I have to comment on behalf of people who may not always see the benefit of these measures—those to whom I have spoken over the past week in anticipation of this debate, who have concerns and have asked me to convey them in the House tonight. I understand that this further tax hike is a blow to some of the people I represent—the middle classes and the self-employed. They see it as such, and I have to say so. The rise in national insurance for employers and employees will dissuade some employers from offering additional hours.
A perhaps forgotten and ignored issue is the impact on the morale of people in such businesses who do not see the benefit in the proposals before us. There is no better way of illustrating a case than taking an example from my own constituency. Just in the past few days, I had the opportunity to speak to a young married couple who have two children. They are both working. They are not entitled to housing benefit, so some years ago they bought their own house, and they have a fairly large mortgage. For them, the cost of living has increased dramatically. The husband is self-employed, and he cannot raise his prices in line with the prices coming in, because then he would not have any business. Indirect taxation has risen, and risen again. His business has suffered because people simply do not have the money to decorate their homes, which is what he does. The wife received a rise, with the additional pressure and workload that came with it, yet they find that being on the borderline of the new tax threshold means that they are scarcely better off. They are just on the wrong side of that tax threshold. The frustration they expressed to me demonstrated the sobering reality of how some people see the future of their business.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
People such as my hon. Friend’s constituents are looking forward to the increase in personal allowances to which the Government are now committed, which is a good thing. However, given the increase in national insurance contributions, the anomaly is that such people will find it even more difficult to move out of recession.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, which are very positive. I think that if everyone sat down for a moment and looked at their own constituency, we could all replicate this situation everywhere across the whole United Kingdom.
The couple who came to see me did not have any help when their boiler broke, their car broke down, or the heating bills came in: they had to manage all that themselves. That puts things into perspective. They did not ask for a handout, or believe that they were entitled to one. They simply asked me whether I could do something, as the Member for Strangford, to represent their viewpoint in this Chamber, and that is what I intend to do. This is an example of the low morale of a hard-working family who feel that they are swimming against the current. I would always caution that we should ensure at all times that people feel that it is better to work, and these people have that work ethic, which is good news.
I know that Government Members will say that this is “only” a 1% increase in national insurance contributions, and that is true. Let us remember, though, that it is to be coupled with an increase in university fees. It must also be coupled with an increase in tax on oil, which results in higher petrol and diesel costs across the whole United Kingdom, particularly in Northern Ireland. We have the highest price for diesel and petrol in the whole UK, and the VAT increase in January will add to the price hikes and the pressure on families.
As a balanced individual who can see the good element in the Bill, I point out that the fact that new businesses will get help with their first 10 employees’ contributions is good news. However, I have to ask: what about the small and medium-sized businesses that are currently struggling, such as the one run by the couple I mentioned? To them, a £2,000 bonus would be the incentive to keep pouring their energy into their business. Many other businesses in my area would love to have that opportunity as well. I ask the Economic Secretary whether there is any scope for businesses that have opened in the past few years to avail themselves of help that could save businesses and jobs, and subsequently ensure that their revenue continues to go into the contributions pot.
The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) hit upon an issue that other Members have also mentioned, and I agree with her comments. I believe that small and medium-sized businesses need help. I do not believe that that can be done through the Bill, but I would like them to receive some contribution and help as a next stage. Perhaps the Economic Secretary will indicate whether and how that can be done, and on what time scale. It is imperative that we in this House have a full grasp of what is intended in the next period, so that we can go back to our constituents and let them know.
It is not in my nature to oppose anything simply for the sake of it. That is not how I work. However, I honestly believe that many people are on the brink, and I have to say so. Consideration must be given to small and medium-sized businesses and those with a small number of workers. I know that money has to be raised and that someone has to provide it. That is the purpose of the debate. What I do not know is why it has to be the same people who provide it all the time. That is what has happened. The self-employed, the middle class, and small and medium-sized enterprises that exist today must all be part of the equation. On behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, and of my constituency in particular, I ask the Economic Secretary to consider those matters fully.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
A common theme running through the debate—almost the golden thread of it—has been that of not seeking to oppose for the sake of opposition. Of course, I entirely subscribe to that emotion. However, although I rejoice in seeing a sinner repentant, and the Conservative party being converted once more to the policy of Keynesian fiscal incentives, I feel that the Bill is in many ways a disincentive and, even more seriously, a crude, clumsy and extremely complicated one.
Much has been made of geography and the fact that large parts of the country are excluded from the glorious sunshine of this Bill’s benefits, which will cause flowers to bloom and businesses to leap, as from the brow of Jove, into the marketplace fully formed. The excluded areas are not just the leafy shires where the only concern is getting one’s second au pair, or third Range Rover. They are also places such as Milton Keynes, Medway—Medway!—Portsmouth, Reading, Slough, Southampton, Luton, Peterborough and Thurrock. It is true that the Bill also excludes parts of the south-west London-Surrey border where people are so wealthy that they can afford the luxury of electing Liberal Democrats, but in excluding such a large area the Government are assuming that within the eastern region, the home counties and London there exists a seething tide of entrepreneurial energy, ready to burst forth at any minute, that needs no assistance.
The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said that there was a message coming from the House tonight. Well, the message is, “London, the home counties, East Anglia: get lost. You can manage on your own, you don’t need any help.” That is desperately crude. In times of tight margins, small incentives make a huge difference. The geography of this country is so tight and small that whereas Hampshire is excluded from the benefits of the Bill, Dorset and Wiltshire are not. One does not have to read one’s Blackmore to know that the boundaries and borders in those areas are very close and tight. Is the coalition Government’s aim to empty out as much of London, the home counties and East Anglia as possible and send everybody flooding to Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset?
Stephen Pound
We have had some very successful imports from there in the House, particularly from North East Somerset. None the less, I am not entirely convinced that it should be the policy of Her Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom to act in that crude way.
Talking of crudeness, advancing the idea that we can somehow assume that people will not move into a low-tax zone, like one of those Chinese economic zones, is simply not being serious about the realities of modern business. There are no Liberal Democrats in the House tonight—a happenstance that will doubtless be replicated on a longer-term basis after 2015. One thing that they tried, in one of their strange, clouded pipe dreams during the election campaign, was the suggestion that we could have geographically specific immigration—presumably with border posts on the M1, so that certain parts of the country could benefit from immigration while other parts could not. A quick glance at the map of this country shows that that simply is not possible. We will immediately have the difficulty of disincentivisation occurring in the south-east, while the benefits are transferred to the rest of the country.
The Bill is also ferociously complicated. Everybody thinks they know what a new business is, but nobody can define it. We heard in an intervention by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) that apprentices are not covered.
I turn, as ever I do, to the explanatory notes, which have been written in the most extraordinary way. We read about Roy the carpenter; Sam the noble publican wishing to hand his business on to Tom; and Rosie and Jim the plumbers—none of whom is included in the Bill’s provisions. We read of an extraordinary ménage in what I had previously thought was the rather dull world of accountancy, in which Alan, Ben, Charles and David decide to link up with Ellen and Frances. In doing so, they also bring in a mutual friend, George. That is experience beyond that of most Members.
My particular favourite example is almost a Mills and Boon novel: John and Paul the dentists, who have been partners for many years but fall out. One imagines John and Paul, their eyes meeting over the face masks as they attend to a cavity together, their latex-covered digits brushing against each other. Then, one day, they fall out and set up alternative dental practices. John and Paul, once so close, are close no more. The explanatory notes should be published by Mills and Boon, not by the House of Commons.
After all those examples, what do we find? We find that the complicated reality of new businesses is such that the coda to that great, glorious, rather romantic tale is, to quote paragraph 46:
“The intended effect of this provision is that a person will be prevented from enjoying a holiday if, before beginning to carry on a business, the person enters into arrangements that mean that at some point after the person’s business has started he may undertake activities carried on by another business and, had the person been undertaking those activities at the time the business was started, a holiday would not have been allowed.”
That is reductio ad absurdum. How can we possibly even begin to take seriously a Bill that, leaving aside the romantic dentists and Rosie and Jim the entrepreneurial plumbers, creates such an incredibly complicated mechanism? That is not what we should be doing.
The Economic Secretary, as ever, cuts to the heart of the matter. I have great admiration for her. She is no stranger to the streets of Acton, where first we met. She had a reputation then for striking through all the persiflage that normally infests this place like wisteria—if that is not a painful subject for the Conservatives. She asked earlier, “Would it be better for this holiday to be extended across the whole country, or is it better for it to go to two thirds of the country?” I have to say that it should be all or nothing. The minute we try to set up those complicated differentials, there are immense problems. Why could the measure not be applied sectorally? Why could we not choose a particular sector and incentivise it? I am talking about those that employ large numbers and have a proven track record of entrepreneurial success. Why could we not continue with the enlightened work of the previous Labour Administration and provide start-up support for capital equipment and allow deferred VAT payments?
There are so many things that we could have done. What we have before us is probably—I say probably—rooted in decency and good, honest Keynesian politics. However, it has become so complicated that I fear that there will be very few businesses leaping to life in Liverpool, Manchester, Rotherham or wherever. There are some entrepreneurs in London who may say, “Without that additional advantage, why not relocate not only outside London but outside the UK?”
The hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said that he was as comfortable operating a company in this country as he was in the United States. People will look at this measure in the context of a global economy. What we have here is crude, complicated and unfocused. I am not entirely sure that it will be the agency that will kill unemployment and bring us all into some glorious new future. I appreciate that hundreds of new civil servants will be employed to make this system work, and I welcome that; we need more work. How tragic is it that this Bill—the Bill to encourage the private sector outside the home counties—will end up employing more civil servants in London and, almost certainly, not providing that great entrepreneurial spark in the rest of the nation?
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
As a new Member of this House, I am learning an awful lot of lessons, including the one that says never attempt to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) at the end of a long debate, so I will keep my remarks characteristically short.
Like many Members, I was surprised to find myself as one of the MPs for the greater south-east—a new region of which we are all delighted to be a part, particularly those of us in the east of England. Joking aside, this Bill will have a serious impact on my constituents in Luton South. Luton is my home town; it is a jewel in the east of England and businesses like it.
A 2010 survey showed that access to a strategic road network, rail networks and Luton airport and its proximity to London are all great for business. None the less, we have problems, too. Even as a jewel in the east, we suffer from unemployment. Jobseekers’ allowance claimants form 7.5% of the population—it has risen over the past couple of years—compared with an average of 4% in the wider east. Median earnings are £350 a week in Luton compared with £410 a week in the rest of the east.
The east is a vastly disparate area. I am reminded of that when it takes me two and a half hours to drive to Norwich and two hours to Cardiff. It is a vast area as well, but it gets the same blanket national insurance conditions under this Bill, which is surely unfair.
Being at the margins of the east is also a problem. Those same road and rail networks that make Luton an attractive place for business can help its creative work force to leave—and to receive a £50,000 golden hello for setting up a business elsewhere. If the purpose is to encourage jobs in the non-excluded areas rather than in the greater south-east, then areas at the margins will be disproportionately affected. For places such as Luton it is a double whammy because there will be public-sector job losses over the coming years and a less competitive environment in which to establish a new business. Indeed, it is a triple whammy because Luton’s great road and rail networks will encourage people to move 15 or 20 minutes away to establish their business, and the area will lose valuable new jobs at a time of rising public sector unemployment. That is why I sponsored early-day motion 537, which said:
“That this House notes that the Government’s decision to introduce a Class 1 Employer National Insurance exemption for new businesses in regions other than the East, South East and London will have a negative effect on growth in those areas collectively termed the Greater South East; further notes that in areas which border, or have good rail and road links with non-Greater South Eastern town and cities, the strategy positively encourages entrepreneurs to start new businesses away from their own communities, breaking community ties and vastly increasing unemployment; and further notes that the same strategy fails to recognise the vast disparity within the Greater South East region, where some towns and cities experience levels of unemployment and deprivation that are equal to or worse than the parts of the country that will benefit from this scheme.”
The disparity within regions is the key point. Luton’s businesses will be hit hard as will others across the south-east. Potential new businesses will be affected. Some 82% of Luton’s businesses employ fewer than 10 members of staff, which are exactly the sort of operations that this policy is meant to help in other parts of the country. Again, more than four-fifths of local businesses do not have sites elsewhere in Luton. These are Luton-based businesses run by Luton people, and they will be hit before they even have the chance to get started.
The Government argue that anything other than the binary distinction between south-east and the “other” would be too difficult a distinction for the boffins at the Treasury to work out. In response to the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), the Exchequer Secretary said that the measure
“is targeted on countries and regions within the UK where reliance on public sector employment is at its highest. For practical reasons the Government have no plans to introduce national insurance contribution exemptions for smaller geographical units.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 359W.]
I hope that in Committee, the Government will be open to considering different models or different, more graduated distributions of the national insurance holiday schemes. Changing the ratio is the stated ambition of the Bill. The data for it exist for local authority areas, which are explicitly listed by name in the Bill. Will the Government choose to look at that as an option for applying the changes? My constituents in the Luton local authority would be extremely grateful if they did so.
In summary, the Government have chosen to favour some people, some businesses and some communities over others. Although I understand that there are pros and cons to such an approach, to apply that choice as a blanket holiday over vast swathes of the country, meaning a £50,000 golden hello for some businesses just 15 or 20 minutes away from the borders of my constituency, will have a negative effect on Luton South. Such an approach does not fulfil the other part of the Government’s stated bargain, which is that if a business loses out by having higher national insurance rates on new start-ups, that will be offset by living in an area that is already doing better when it comes to higher public sector employment. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), his constituency is in the top 10 seats for public sector employment rates, so his constituents will be affected.
In short, if the Government scheme is to favour some areas over others, and it does not work, it will be a waste of money and parliamentary time. If it does work, it will hit my constituents hard and unfairly—judged by the Government’s own criteria. A reasoned amendment will not be moved tonight, and Opposition Members will not oppose the business as it goes forward. We accept that responsible national insurance increases will be required to address the deficit. None the less, I hope that the Government will have the courage to look at the distribution of this holiday so that the hard-pressed and creative people of Luton are not the victims of a Tory triple whammy.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) on his comments. In a nutshell, he has summed up many of the problems and inconsistencies in the Bill. It seems that it has something of a split personality, which has been caused by the Government trying to face in two different directions simultaneously. At the election, many people thought that the Conservatives were promising to reverse entirely the national insurance rise. We consistently heard from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on that issue. Unfortunately, the public did not see the small print that existed at the time.
The Government are merely chipping away at those national insurance changes, and only for employers. That may not actually be a broken promise, but they have rowed back from the impression that they gave to the public. They let everyone think that they were against the change to national insurance, but they never actually intended to reverse it. It is fascinating to see them attempt to cover up that particular shortcoming with the partial increase in the employer national insurance threshold coupled with what most hon. Members, including most Government Members, have described as a complex and insubstantial national insurance tweak that applies to some entrepreneurs in some parts of the country, welcome though it will be to many of them. Political acrobatics have resulted in a contorted Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) argued when highlighting the incoherence of the Bill.
It is true that the previous Labour Administration were prepared to take tough decisions on tax and national insurance, because the banking bail-out required us to raise funds to compensate. The hallmark of political parties is the choices that they make on taxation and expenditure. This Government have chosen to cut severely investment in public services and to raise VAT to 20%. A Labour Government would have chosen a steadier and more sustainable approach to deficit reduction, but national insurance changes would have been part of that.
We chose the national insurance route rather than the VAT route for very good reasons. Slightly contrary to the point made by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), the national insurance changes were not going to be made in June; they were always going to come in from next April, by which time we had hoped that the recovery would be well under way. Unfortunately, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have chosen to go for the VAT increase. That will hit slightly earlier, albeit by only a few months, but the economy will feel it like a punch in the stomach. Their VAT jobs tax could have a greater impact on employment, which it will hit significantly, than the national insurance changes. The CIPD, to which many hon. Members referred, predicts that around 250,000 private sector jobs will be affected, and possibly lost, by the VAT increase, which is just around the corner.
Barry Gardiner
Will my hon. Friend none the less acknowledge that the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) made a pertinent suggestion? She identified the phase of business development that could give maximum benefit to the Treasury—when very small businesses are growing into small to medium-sized businesses, rather than when businesses are growing from zero to micro.
Chris Leslie
Perhaps I got the wrong end of the stick from the hon. Member for Newton Abbot when she made that pertinent point about micro-businesses. The Bill perhaps does not capture the benefit to the economy that small businesses have in that phase of their development. I hope that she will be a member of the Public Bill Committee that considers the Bill, although interestingly, as has been pointed out, perhaps some of the questioning from Government Members might prevent them—mysteriously—from being selected for membership of that Committee. We shall see.
The Prime Minister said before the general election that VAT is
“very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest, it does, I absolutely promise you”.
The Government have chosen a path that will hit employment, jobs and businesses very hard indeed. That should be borne in mind when we consider the Bill. It is odd that this Bill is separate from either of the Finance Bills. I have not quite figured out the Government’s tactics, and perhaps they had not quite worked out what they were going to do. In that wider context, it is necessary to compare their choices in VAT against the national insurance changes.
Hon. Members mostly spoke about part 2 of the Bill, which includes the concept of a national insurance holiday. Such a holiday is, of course, superficially attractive, but there are reasons to be concerned about the poor design of the measure, which applies only to new businesses and not to existing firms. That is important. Many businesses could be under the misapprehension that they will qualify, and a lot of effort and time will go into contacting Business Link and the Treasury to find out whether the measure applies to them, and many will be disappointed.
The proposal is complex because of the limited time and extent of the scheme. It applies only to a small number of employees and there is a convoluted application process. Government Members pointed out that efforts need to made to ensure that the measure is as simple as possible. The Bill will require HMRC to take on 240 extra staff—I am not sure that they will be additional staff, especially given that HMRC is cutting numbers—and we will press the Minister on that extra complement in Committee. Businesses could apply for the national insurance holiday but not get it because they have to swim for hours through treacle to get someone in the Treasury to pick up the phone. That could be a significant problem.
The Minister gave a vague figure when asked how many people had applied since the scheme started in September. Very few people are aware that the scheme exists, and it has hardly been advertised—[Interruption.] I am glad that Liberal Democrat Members have joined us in the Chamber, even if they are just passing through, because they have been conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps that is related to their embarrassment over the VAT comparator.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who highlighted the discriminatory nature of the national insurance holiday proposal—it affects some parts of the country but not others—and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) pointed out the unfairness of a crude system that will exclude the east of England, London and the greater south-east, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South called it. That will cause significant disquiet, and many new entrepreneurs in those parts of the country will complain. Legitimately, they will not understand why they are excluded while reasonably affluent areas of the country outside the greater south-east—Chester, Worcester, Harrogate, York Outer, Tatton and Richmond, to name areas at random—will be eligible for the benefits. My hon. Friend put things perfectly when he said that the boffins at the Treasury ought to be capable of understanding the distinction between the greater south-east and other parts of the country. Of course they are capable of that, and we will seek to make amendments to deal with that problem in Committee.
Unfortunately, this small and partial measure—a national insurance holiday for some businesses in some parts of the country—reveals first of all the Government’s complete failure to develop a regional growth strategy, especially for the English regions. They have taken the knife not only to regional development agencies, but more importantly to the budgets at their disposal to help to build SMEs and provide the infrastructure necessary for businesses to survive. We know that for every £1 spent through the auspices of RDAs, £4.50 of benefits accrued to the regional economies. The Government disregarded evidence from the National Audit Office. They have damaged the prospects for growth in our economy, but particularly in those parts of it that have not benefited from the historic engine of growth that has surrounded London and the south-east. The Government’s alternative —these local enterprise partnerships, which are unfunded, and only partially covering the country—is a poor substitute for a proper regional economic strategy. Nearly 21 million people and 780,000 businesses will not be covered by the LEPs, the Business Secretary has described them as “chaotic”, and Richard Lambert of the CBI has called the process a “bit of a shambles”.
That sums up the Government’s lack of a growth strategy. We know that they have pulled the rug from under the growth White Paper that was meant to be forthcoming. They did that because they have no clear idea of how to drive growth: they are fixated on austerity alone and have no solutions for the long-term course of our economy. That is a great pity. The regional growth fund has been hacked down to a pathetic size, with few opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to apply for support under it. In many ways, therefore, small firms have been cast to one side, with perhaps a few crumbs from the table made available for them as a result of this Marie-Antoinette strategy of the Ministers—“Let them eat cake” seems to be the approach they are willing to take.
The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) rightly pointed out that the Government should be trying to make the banks lend more and give more support to SMEs, making inroads into that desert of loan and credit available to them. We know from the Chancellor’s statement at Treasury questions last week and from Ministers’ comments that they have gone soft on the banks in a number of ways, particularly on the coalition commitment to restart net lending targets for the banks in which they have a shareholding. They have decided now to row back from their commitment to institute those net lending targets, and I urge hon. Members, particularly Government Members, to ask serious questions of Ministers about why they are not prepared to ensure that the banks play their full part in repairing the economy.
I would not like to think that we cannot trust the Chancellor to fulfil some of the pledges to lessen the impact of these national insurance increases. As we know, the Government have already reneged on the commitment on employee national insurance changes, even though the press reported before the election that the Conservative party would do so. It is true that in many ways the personal allowance changes deal with some of these elements, but only in part—there was a commitment on national insurance as well, but it folded and absorbed it into that change. Again, it raised people’s hopes before the general election, but has not fulfilled them.
In particular, the Government are not fully offsetting these changes for employers, which will be a surprise to many people. Before the election, the Conservative party gave the impression that it was fully against the 1% increase and that it would repeal it entirely. [Interruption.] Ministers seem to think that they were going to repeal it entirely. As I see the measures, the impression they gave—[Interruption.] There was small print, it is true, but that was not the impression given. The £4.5 billion change is offset by the £3.1 billion increase in the threshold for employers on national insurance, so there is a deficit of £1.4 billion in the compensation that the Government will not be giving to employers. This is a question not necessarily of a broken promise, but of an impression that many people had that the Government were going to end the jobs tax, as the Prime Minister and Chancellor characterised it. As ever with this Government, however, when we look at the small print, we see that those changes will not be forthcoming.
We have not seen the secondary legislation yet. I would like to know when the Minister will introduce it. Presumably on Monday—traditionally the time of what was the pre-Budget report—we will hear from the Chancellor about the threshold changes and the indexation elements of these changes. Ministers have said they are going to add £21 to the employer threshold, but what will be the indexation? Will they follow the long-standing traditions of the Rooker-Wise amendment when it comes to allowance and threshold changes and follow the retail prices index option, or will they row back again and go for the cheaper consumer prices index option? In other words, will they be giving with one hand, through the threshold change, but taking with the other, by only opting for CPI?
This debate has revealed significant concerns among Government Members about the crude discrimination shown against London, the south-east and the east of England. The Bill reveals a lack of a proper strategy for growth, especially in the English regions, and the Government have revealed their preference for regressive taxation, particularly VAT, which will harm businesses and raise unemployment. We will certainly need to see serious improvements in these measures in Committee.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
We have had an interesting debate and I am grateful for hon. Members’ contributions, especially that of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who provided the most entertaining canter through an explanatory memorandum I have listened to in years.
At the beginning of the debate, my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary explained that the Bill contains two important measures: an increase in national insurance contributions and a regional employer national insurance contributions holiday for new businesses. Both are part of the Government’s plan to reduce the burden of labour taxation, reducing obstacles for those who want to recruit and retain staff. It is worth stressing that the clauses are part of a much wider package of reforms to help businesses and ensure that Britain is again open for business. The reforms are designed to reverse the most damaging aspects of Labour’s ill-conceived jobs tax. I listened with care to the contributions from Labour Members, but members of the public listening will have found it easy to forget that the Labour party left office with unemployment higher than when it entered.
Nevertheless, I am pleased that the debate has led to so many Opposition Members—and, indeed, Government Members—recognising that the best way to kick-start new business, as the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) put it, is to ensure that businesses are not over-taxed. In fact, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) was extolling the virtues of low tax on businesses. That is why the Bill is so important. Were the coalition Government not in power, rather than corporation tax on businesses going down, it would have gone up, and rather than the national insurance burden, particularly on small businesses, being held down, it would have risen remorselessly.
The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) talked about a split personality, but it is probably fairer to level that charge at the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who, on the one hand, wanted to raise national insurance for all employers, but, on the other hand, complained that the tax break we wanted to introduce to reduce national insurance was not fair because it did not apply to all regions. He cannot have it both ways.
Mike Gapes
I am glad that the hon. Lady was listening so carefully to what I said. She refers to unemployment, but will she confirm that 3 million more people were in work when the last Government left office than when they entered?
Justine Greening
A lot of people would debate who those jobs were taken by. In reality, unemployment was higher—every Labour Government leaves office with unemployment higher than when they entered.
I want to talk about some of the most important aspects of the Bill. Employers will be £150 better off each year for each employee earning above the threshold. There will be an increase of 650,000 in the number of employees in respect of whom employers pay no national insurance contributions. Compared to this year, employers will pay less national insurance contribution in respect of those employees earning under £20,000. In fact, low-earning employees will also be better off, because the point at which they start to pay national insurance contributions is also going up—by about £23 per week. By reversing the planned employer national insurance increases, this package will help to maintain the UK’s attraction as a place to do business. In doing so, it will support the Government’s aim of creating a fairer and more competitive tax system. The national insurance holiday will help with the transition to a more sustainable model of economic growth, encourage private sector enterprise and investment where it is most needed, create jobs in some of our poorest regions, and encourage people to become business people, entrepreneurs and wealth creators—the very people who will lead the recovery.
Those points were made eloquently by my hon. Friend Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) and later by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), who also talked about the burden of red tape, which is another matter that the Government are keen to reduce for businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) talked about the need to support business, and to create new jobs and the positive culture that we need to engender throughout the country. That is absolutely what the Government want to do.
The Bill should be seen in the context of wider measures. The Government have taken several steps to support business. In the emergency budget we announced measures to reduce corporation tax, not raise it on large companies year on year. We announced measures to reduce the small companies rate of corporation tax. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about what we can do to help small companies and new companies. He was right, and that is precisely why, instead of increasing corporation tax on those companies, we preferred to try to ensure that they can enjoy a rate decrease.
We have gone further. The regional growth fund will benefit all communities in our country. The capital infrastructure plan was announced as part of the spending review, and more capital will go into supporting our country’s infrastructure than would have happened under the previous Government. We have published the local growth White Paper.
Chris Leslie
In the hon. Lady’s list of Budget changes, what will be the impact of the VAT increase on employment?
Justine Greening
Clearly, that must be seen in the context of our desperate need to tackle the fiscal deficit that the Labour party left us. It is one reason why our overall plan is not just to support business—that is clearly how we will grow our economy back to the healthy state that it needs to get to—but, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, to make our numbers add up across the board. We must get rid of the structural deficit that his party handed over to us.
We believe that the package of measures is right, the OECD has said that it is moving in the right direction, and it has been welcomed throughout Europe. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that we should not increase VAT, that prompts a question. His right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) was interviewed recently and said that the Labour party would have increased VAT, so we cannot accept the hon. Gentleman’s comments that his party would not have increased it. There is a blank piece of paper, and at the top are the words, “Labour economic strategy”. It is time for the Labour party to start to become credible by trying at least to pull together and to plan for our economy. Most people will put the contributions about jobs and the complaints about reductions in national insurance not going far enough in the context of a party that has absolutely no alternative plan for managing our economy. They will realise that its arguments are not credible.
The regional aspect of national insurance policy must be seen in the context of the broader package to support business. The level of VAT registrations in different parts of our country and the number of jobs created in different parts of our country show that we need to ensure that we can stimulate growth, particularly in the communities that can benefit most from it. The policy should be looked at not in isolation, but in the context of the broader tax reductions on business and the rise in the personal allowance for employees. Nearly 900,000 of the lowest-income workers in our country will be taken out of income tax altogether. The vast majority of people will benefit from our proposals, and under the Bill many of them will be small businesses with a handful of employees.
Barry Gardiner
I do not think I heard a single speech from either side of the Chamber that suggested in any way that those benefits should not flow to certain businesses. The question that was repeatedly asked and that the Economic Secretary and her colleagues failed to answer is why those businesses are favoured, not only when they are specifically not the ones in the areas that will produce the economic growth that she indicates is required from the policy, but because of the manifest unfairness that will result from their distribution.
Justine Greening
I realise that the hon. Gentleman takes a different view about how to target the policy. I happen to believe that he is wrong. We recognise that there needs to be some targeting, but the way in which he would have done that would have been unwieldy and unaffordable. In the context of our broader measures to reduce corporation tax instead of allowing rises, which would have happened under the Labour party, and the measures to take the lowest-income employees in our country—nearly 900,000—out of income tax altogether, we are trying to strike a balance, and I believe that we have struck the right balance.
I have no doubt that we will continue the debate in Committee, but we must be pragmatic. I draw attention to the hon. Gentleman’s attempts to target policies when the Opposition were in government. They faced difficulties with their changes during their final years in office. Under the deprived area fund, and the neighbourhood renewal fund, which became the working neighbourhood fund, some communities that had previously received funding were cut off. We want an overall package that supports business across the board, while retaining an element of support targeted at the regions that we think need to benefit most from the next economic upturn. That is what the Bill is doing.
The package of reforms of which the measures in the Bill are part will benefit individuals and employers throughout the country, and help us to achieve the twin objectives of creating a fair and competitive UK tax system. The burden of labour taxation will be reduced by more than £6 billion a year in a way that will help the lowest earners in Britain and protect lower-paid jobs.
The national insurance holiday provides targeted support to new enterprises, and encourages people to set up their own businesses and to employ new staff. It is an important part of our economic strategy to help the parts of the country that are most reliant on the public sector, and to ensure that we make the transition to a more sustainable model of growth and employment as smooth as possible. The Bill will ensure that as the recovery takes hold, all parts of the country will benefit. It will enable a reduction in taxation on labour nationally, and provide extra support in targeted areas. It will be good for growth, and for jobs. I commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
National Insurance Contributions Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7),
That the following provisions shall apply to the National Insurance Contributions Bill:
Committal
1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 9 December 2010.
3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Norman Lamb.)
Question agreed to.
Business without Debate
Delegated legislation
Internet Pornography
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this matter tonight. I thank Members on both sides of the House who have either made time to attend the debate or expressed support for my proposal since it was announced yesterday. I am asking for a change in regulation that would require all UK-based internet service providers to restrict universal access to pornographic material by implementing a simple opt-in system based on age verification.
The internet is a phenomenon that has changed our lives. I well remember my new year’s resolution in 1996, which was to get to grips with this thing called the internet. Since then, there has been a massive growth in the size and complexity of the online world. In Britain today, more than 19 million households—73% of the total—have access to the internet, and the speed of access and complexity of content are growing all the time.
Children, with their annoying ability to be early adopters of new technology, are particularly heavy users of the internet, with 99% of 12 to 15-year-olds, 93% of eight to 11-year-olds and 75% of five to seven-year-olds saying that they use it regularly. We know that many obtain access in an unsupervised way, which is not surprising, given that 31% of 12 to 15-year-olds have internet access in their bedrooms. We also know that many children use this either knowingly or unknowingly to access pornography.
Pornography is one of the most widely available forms of content on the internet, representing 12% of the estimated 250 million global websites. Studies suggest, shockingly, that one in three British children aged 10—a third of our British 10-year-olds—have viewed pornography on the internet, while four out of every five children aged 14 to 16 admit to regularly accessing explicit photographs and footage on their home computers. The world has really changed.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I am very glad that the hon. Lady is raising this important issue tonight. Does she see, as I do, a connection between the figures to which she refers and the research by the End Violence Against Women coalition that suggests that a third of young girls experience unwanted sexual contact at school?
Claire Perry
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, as always. I will speak in a moment about the unpleasant impacts of access to pornography on our young girls and boys.
The numbers that I have just cited are drawn from a relatively small sample, but more extensive studies suggest that almost 60% of children aged nine to 19 had viewed online pornography and that the rate of unwitting or unwanted exposure was increasing sharply. I know that many parents will have had that sickening feeling as their child clicks through, quite innocently, to a website after searching for a particular term. For example, a search for American Girls—a series of wholesome, culturally appropriate dolls—can end up at the American Girls website, which is certainly not a wholesome place to be. It is truly shocking how easy it is to access that kind of information.
These statistics are simply red-lining a problem that every parent recognises—namely, that our children are viewing material that we would never want them to see, especially at such a young age. So what can we do about it? The current way of controlling access to pornographic material on the internet is via safety settings and filtering software, installed and maintained by users—parents, teachers and carers across the country. Unfortunately, however, through technological ignorance, time pressure or inertia or for myriad other reasons, this filtering solution is not working. Even among parents who are regular internet users, only 15% say that they know how to install a filter. It is unfortunately also the case that our children know better than we do how to circumvent the filters, while the constant changes in internet technology and content mean that they can quickly become outdated.
I would like to raise two key issues about the current, unsatisfactory situation. The first, as the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) has just pointed out, is that access to pornography has a profound and negative effect on our children. Against the backdrop of a drip-feed of sexualisation that promotes pole dancing as healthy exercise for young girls and high-heeled shoes as appropriate footwear for six-month-old babies, the availability of soft-core and hard-core pornography in our homes is damaging our children.
Yesterday I attended a Safermedia conference sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), and heard compelling evidence of this damage, including the explosion in the number of children in this country being referred to addiction clinics with a “pornography problem”, and the fact that many studies demonstrate that watching internet pornography contributes to people seeing women as sex objects, increases sexual risk-taking such as having unprotected or anal sex, and relaxes the boundaries of sexual violence in a completely unacceptable way.
It is of course the ease of access to unimaginable acts of sexual violence and depravity on the internet that causes the greatest problems for parents. We all know what happens when a bit of innocent investigative clicking leads us to images that are truly sickening. Phillip Hodson of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy sums this up very appropriately when he says:
“The entire history of human perversion and sexual deviation is there at your fingertips and a great deal of it is free.”
The second problem in the current system of internet provision is the presumption that it is entirely the consumer’s responsibility to safeguard their family from harmful imagery. I am a fervent supporter of personal responsibility and have an innate dislike of Big Brother regulation, but there is a form of content delivery in this country that, in contrast to the internet, is either regulated by the Government or has a successful self-regulation model that does not appear draconian or heavy-handed. Our television viewing is restricted by sensible Ofcom guidelines, including section 1, which says that material equivalent to the British Board of Film Classification’s R18 rating must not be broadcast at any time, and that adult sex material cannot be broadcast at any time other than between 22.00 and 05.30 hours on premium subscription services or on pay-per-view or night services, which have to have mandatory restricted access, including PIN verification systems. We all accept such regulation of our television viewing quite happily.
What we see on our cinema screens is subject to regulation by the British Board of Film Classification, and we have accepted that for years. Our high street hoardings and general advertising are regulated by the Advertising Standards Authority, which displayed its teeth recently by removing posters from the Westfield shopping centre. Government guidelines inform newsagents’ displays of lad magazines and porn magazines. Even the mobile phone industry, which has arguably seen even more change than the internet in the past 10 years and whose products are increasingly used to access the internet, has introduced a reasonably successful self-regulation model that requires an adult verification check before users can access inappropriate material on the internet.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
Carphone Warehouse is conducting a campaign on this issue, working with Professor Tanya Byron who has been working with the Government in this area for three or four years. A survey conducted by Carphone Warehouse found that 85% of children did not have parental controls activated on their mobile phones, 81% of parents felt that they needed to know more about how to deal with this problem, and 48% of parents wrongly thought that it was impossible for their child to download adult content on their mobile phone. I welcome the efforts being made by the mobile phone companies—there is no doubt that they have tried hard—but does my hon. Friend agree that there is still a great deal more to be done?
Claire Perry
As always, my hon. Friend makes an excellent, fact-filled point. I agree that although the self-regulation model is better than the one that pertains for internet service providers, there is much more to be done.
Why should internet service providers be any different from other content providers? Why is the onus on parents, teachers and carers to act as web guides and policemen? Where is the industry responsibility?
Three objections are usually raised when changes such as I am proposing tonight are discussed. The first is that any restriction on access to pornography on the internet is an infringement of free speech. I hope I am no Mary Whitehouse figure, although she was right about many things, but the nature of the internet has led to a proliferation of imagery and a discussion of sexual practices which is quite mind-boggling in its awfulness. I will not read out some of the information that was provided at the Safer Media conference yesterday, but I, at the age of 46, was introduced to sexual practices—one or two clicks away—that I have never heard of and simply cannot conceive of having my daughters view. It was simply sickening.
It is simply beyond belief that people can find sexual pleasure in viewing images of children, men and women being subject to the worst sexual degradation and violence. If that is our definition of free speech, the definition is wrong. That is not the purpose of tonight’s debate, however. I do not propose to reduce or restrict inappropriate content for adults who access the internet; I would simply like to make it more difficult for our children to access that material.
The second objection to my proposal is that it is too costly and too difficult to implement—that it is a regulatory burden on a struggling industry. That is a red herring. Although the content of the internet is generated out there in the wild west on millions of international websites, access is concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies. The Digital Economy Act 2010 states that there are 450 fixed internet providers in the UK, but that the top six, which include household names such as BT, Virgin, TalkTalk, BSkyB, Orange and O2, have more than 90% of the market share. That is not a large group of companies to deal with and regulate. Notably, the combined revenues of that business model are more than £3 billion a year, so it is a deeply profitable industry in which to engage.
Another concern is the definition of pornography. If we are to have an age-verification system, how do we define pornography? We already have perfectly workable definitions of adult content provided by the Obscene Publications Act 1959, and provided and used by Ofcom in the television industry. The required blocking technology is available in distributed form, with the onus on parents and users to implement it, but one does not need to be Bill Gates to pull the whole thing into a more sensible system of internet regulation.
Interestingly, although the official view of the Internet Service Providers Association—confusingly named ISPA—is that any official restrictions would be hugely expensive, technically difficult and open to circumvention, one provider, TalkTalk, proposes to provide a ratings system in the new year, with an opt-in system including U, 14, 18 or unclassified ratings similar to those of the British Board of Film Classification. Although that is a responsible and welcome step which I commend, it is a voluntary system, again with the onus on parents to sign up. Surely it would be better for TalkTalk to offer a default U setting and then allow an opt-in to more advanced levels.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is simply a matter of consistency? We think it perfectly reasonable for Governments to pass laws that prevent young people from accessing damaging things such as cigarettes and alcohol, but pornography is just as damaging, if not worse, because damage to the mind can be permanent, whereas damage to the body can be temporary and recovered from. As a matter of consistency, therefore, Governments should act as she suggests.
Claire Perry
I thank my hon. Friend for making his usual deeply eloquent and relevant points. He is right. We have thrown up our hands, put the issue in the “too hard” basket—forgive the pun—and basically said that this is something Governments should not regulate. I believe it is.
The third objection to such proposals is that if we have age-verification software, children will just lie about their age and access the information anyway. The previous Government sensibly introduced workable age-verification restrictions on online gambling sites in 2005, however—an excellent model that works well and searches financial and electoral databases to verify that users are old enough to enter the site and engage in the gambling within. It is a workable model, the previous Government introduced it, and they are to be commended for doing so.
Britain has taken steps towards internet safety before. The industry acted independently and responsibly on child abuse imagery by setting up the Internet Watch Foundation, which finds sites displaying abuse that the industry then works to block. We have led the world in introducing that technology, and the people and organisations involved are to be strongly commended. It has been a huge success: the amount of child sex abuse content reported or found to be hosted in the UK has dropped from 18% to less than 1%; and 95% of our broadband services use that blocking technology. It can be done.
The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is also to be commended for introducing the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which brought in a ban on the possession of extreme pornographic material. That is highly commendable, but of course the content is there on the internet and available for viewing by us and our children with one or two clicks of a mouse.
All that progress has been made, but regulating internet access to inappropriate content continues to stump successive Governments and, in my view, the industry. I believe the time has come to stop ducking an issue of enormous concern to parents, teachers and carers throughout the country. We are often ridiculed for raising it, barraged with information on why the internet should be treated differently, bamboozled with the problem of international co-operation and told that it is our responsibility and no one else’s to keep our children safe,
I beg to differ. It is time for Britain to take a lead on the matter and for the Government, with their commitment to family-friendly policies, to act. Without action, and with technological convergence, we will increasingly be able to access internet pornography and all internet content via television, raising the prospect of this damaging and degrading material, which is shocking enough when viewed as thumbnails or on an A4-sized computer screen, being piped into our homes and displayed in high-definition glory on 4-foot-wide television screens.
The arguments for passive acceptance and self-regulation are past their sell-by date, and it is time to regulate the provision of internet services in this country. We already successfully regulate British television channels, cinema screens, high street hoardings and newspaper shelves to stop our children seeing inappropriate images, and mobile phone companies have come together to restrict access to adult material, so why should the internet be any different?
British internet service providers should share the responsibility for keeping our children safe, and there should be an opt-in system that uses age verification for access to such material. I urge the Minister to engage with the internet service providers to set a timeline for those changes and, if they will not act, to move to regulate an industry that is doing so much damage to our children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
May I say how grateful I am to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) for raising this important subject and giving the House the opportunity to debate it? She put her case incredibly forcefully. We are used to saying that we are middle-aged when policemen start to look younger. Perhaps we can add a new phrase to the lexicon: when we start saying Mary Whitehouse was right, we might be approaching middle age. My hon. Friend’s points were very well made, and chime very much with my thinking.
The subject of this debate has been misleadingly referred to as the regulation of access to pornography on the internet; what we are really talking about is ensuring that we can protect not only children from accessing unsuitable adult material, but adults from the extreme versions of pornography—to which, I am glad to say, my hon. Friend only alluded. As she said in her opening remarks, the internet is fast becoming the dominant medium not just in this country but all over the world. Moreover, as she noted at the end of her speech, when it converges with television it will become all pervasive. The struggle to deal with what one might loosely call internet regulation is something that we are having to come to grips with very rapidly as the internet advances so speedily.
I found out to my cost only last week, after making a speech on net neutrality, that anyone who ventures into the vexed subject of internet regulation, in the broadest sense, can set a number of hares running. There are many people who believe that the internet should not be regulated at all. This Government’s position is that the internet should be lightly regulated, so that we benefit from many of the advances that have come about from a lightly regulated internet. Although we are focusing in this debate on the internet’s negative aspects, it is important to remember that a lightly regulated internet has brought transformative companies to the web. As we learned from a piece of research published a couple of weeks ago, in just 15 to 20 years, internet commerce has come to represent something in the order of 9% to 10% of our economy.
This remains a very serious subject, which deserves very serious consideration. As with any area of life, it is vital that children and the vulnerable be protected. Where there is harm and safeguards are not heeded, we need effective sanctions to prosecute illegal acts.
Before addressing my hon. Friend’s specific points, it might be helpful to set out the issue in the broader context of the Government’s approach to the regulation of adult material in general. It is important to remember that we regulate adult material, regardless of the medium through which it is transmitted or published. The Government’s policy is that controls on published material, including material published online, should strike a balance between freedom of expression and protection of the public. It should also be proportionate to the potential harm caused.
Clearly, there is material that should not be published at all. This is covered by the criminal law. All material published or broadcast in the UK is subject to the Obscene Publications Act 1959, under which it is a criminal offence to publish any article or image considered to be obscene. The Act also applies to the distribution of material on the internet or by mobile phone. It is important to note the general principle that an action that is illegal if committed offline is also illegal if committed online. Just because it is on the web does not make it all right. This applies both to the distribution of illegal material and to harmful behaviour.
Claire Perry
I am grateful to the Minister for launching into what sounds as if it will be a full and reasoned argument, but is it not the case that there have been almost no successful prosecutions of British companies within our criminal jurisdiction domain—I am thinking particularly of the Perrin case, but also subsequent cases—and that it is almost impossible to apply international law to shut down what we know to be blatant breaches of the regulation governing “appropriate adult material”?
Mr Vaizey
I shall come to the point that the web is global, so there is an international aspect to these issues. On the specific question of whether there have been prosecutions, it is not necessarily the case that the number of prosecutions reveals the effectiveness of an Act. The existence of an Act might often be enough to keep people within the relevant boundaries. As my hon. Friend says, the internet is a global phenomenon and people can access content from other jurisdictions. I will address that point in a few moments. As she rightly points out, I am trying to build a reasoned argument.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the Minister agree that this is a worldwide phenomenon, not just a United Kingdom matter? It is often other countries in the world that originate those websites, and then they are broadcast in the UK. What steps does the hon. Gentleman envisage us taking with other countries, whether those be Brazil, Spain or elsewhere, to ensure that we do not allow access to such material in the UK?
Mr Vaizey
I am coming to self-regulation, which is what I understand my hon. Friend to be calling for on the part of our internet service providers, to prevent access to inappropriate content. It is obviously not for this country to change the obscenity or pornographic laws in other jurisdictions, but it is important to recognise that we are dealing with content from beyond our own jurisdiction. Let me press on. I shall make my argument before accepting further interventions, so that hon. Members will be in a position to see the argument in the round.
On 26 January last year, Parliament further strengthened controls in the UK by making unlawful extreme pornographic material, including pornographic material containing explicit sexual violence that is life-threatening or likely to result in serious injury or bestiality. The Government also increased the maximum penalty for offences under the Obscene Publications Act from three to five years’ imprisonment. Under the Protection of Children Act 1978, as amended, the UK has an absolute prohibition on the taking, making, circulation and possession with a view to distribution of any indecent photograph of a child under 18. Such offences carry a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
There is also a law against the distribution of indecent images of children. Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes the simple possession of indecent photographs of children an offence, and it carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment. In this context I am delighted to be able to welcome the appointment of Peter Davies, the new chief executive of CEOP—the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. I want to pay tribute to the work of his predecessor, Jim Gamble, as well as to the outstanding work of CEOP in tackling the sexual exploitation of children.
My hon. Friend also referred to the work of the Internet Watch Foundation, which I am due to meet shortly to discuss self-regulation of the internet. As she pointed out, the IWF was set up in 1996 by UK ISPs to enable members of the public to report child abuse content in newsgroups or websites hosted anywhere in the world, as well as obscene content hosted in the UK. If that content is considered potentially illegal, the IWF passes the details to the UK police to start action against the originators, and will seek to get the material taken down at source or ask ISPs to deny access to the websites concerned.
I am very interested in the work of the Internet Watch Foundation, because I believe that it provides a model that is now well established and working effectively. The issue I particularly want to discuss with the IWF is whether its work, which has hitherto focused on child abuse content, can be widened to cover some of the other issues that my hon. Friend has raised this evening.
As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, access to online pornography is not a problem for the UK alone. We have to recognise that the internet is a global network. This brings with it real challenges to the effective regulation of access to pornography. The overwhelming bulk of obscene material published on the internet originates abroad, sometimes in countries that do not share our approach to such material. It is simply the case, and has been for many years, that much pornographic material that it would be illegal to publish in the UK remains legal to publish in many other European countries, and even in the United States.
The UK ISPs take a responsible approach to the content that they host, both of their own volition and in co-operation with law enforcement and Government agencies. Where they are advised that content that they host in the UK contravenes UK legislation, they will readily remove it.
My hon. Friend talked about an age-verified opt-in procedure for internet access to pornography hosted in the UK. This is already the case, although my hon. Friend made her own forceful argument that it might not be effective enough. The managers of websites featuring mature content have a legal responsibility to indicate clearly on their front page that those sites are unsuitable for anybody under the age of 18. Additionally, when websites charge for access, they must place their adult content behind a credit card barrier, to reduce further the risk of children and young people accessing it. We will continue to consider how that protection might be made more effective.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
Is the Minister aware of the private Member’s Bill proposed by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), which is designed to remove the anonymity of prepaid credit cards for purchases under £100, whereby such material can be anonymously purchased by under-age people—or by anybody else? That is important, because it is what drives the child pornography industry.
Mr Vaizey
That is a very interesting point, and I suspect that the consumer credit Minister is aware of it. I will certainly sit down with him and discuss whether there is a read-across into the issue we are discussing this evening.
As I said earlier, a UK-based website was recently forced to take down its front page because it hosted adult content that was accessed by under-18s. That shows that there are some examples where this is working.
Claire Perry
I am sorry to be constantly interrupting the Minister, because I know that he has a great deal of material to get through, but I think that he is going down the dead end of focusing on content. As he said, much of the content is provided and hosted by websites that are outside the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction. We all know that the age 18 verification is simply a figment, and that there is almost no way of enforcing it.
The Minister has cited one website, but there are more than a quarter of a billion websites in the world, of which more than 10% are pornographic. I firmly believe that the onus of responsibility lies with the six British companies that are piping 90% of the content into our homes to provide some sort of opt-in software, so that we need not chase the red herrings of random porn websites in jurisdictions over which we have no control.
Mr Vaizey
I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I will address it in a moment, but first I want to talk about the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. I do not think that this is a dead end, because UKCCIS does incredibly important work. It focuses on content, self-regulation and joined-up government. Although, as I have said, we have a legal framework, that framework alone will not keep our children safe online. Real, effective protection for children can be achieved through parents, charities, industry, law enforcement authorities and Government working together. That is why Professor Tanya Byron—to whom my hon. Friend referred—was asked to take charge of an independent review on child internet safety, which led directly to the launch of UKCCIS.
UKCCIS is chaired by Ministers from the Department for Education and the Home Office, and Ministers from other Departments, including mine, attend its meetings regularly. It brings together more than 170 organisations from across industry, including internet service providers, the third sector, law enforcement authorities and the devolved Administrations, so that they can take positive steps to help children to stay safe online.
I assure my hon. Friend that the Government are working with the internet industry, through UKCCIS, to create an online environment in which children are protected from potentially harmful or inappropriate content. We want our young people to develop the knowledge, skills and resilience that will enable them to avoid accessing such content, and, if they do come across it, to avoid it in future and report it to the appropriate authorities when it causes major concern. UKCCIS is also working to encourage parents to take responsibility for what their children see online. I hear what my hon. Friend says about the need for ISPs to block this content, but I think it important for parents to take responsibility, and to use the filters and parental controls that are available in current technology to prevent their children from accessing harmful material.
My hon. Friend pointed out that people access pornography not just through their computers, but through their mobile phones. That is another issue to which I am hugely sympathetic, and it has been raised with me in my capacity as a constituency Member of Parliament. As my hon. Friend said, all UK operators operate a parental control regime on mobile phones that should prevent access to over-18 sites. It is set as a default on all phones when they are purchased, and it is for the consumer to request its removal, subject to proof of age. Ofcom provides detailed information on parental controls and access to adult content on its website. However, that goes only some way to protecting young mobile users from harmful content. Unfortunately, it is not possible to tackle content that is shared via bluetooth, for example, on a phone-to-phone basis. That is why the work of organisations such as UKCCIS is so important
What causes me to have a huge amount of sympathy with what my hon. Friend has said is the fact that I do not subscribe to the view that internet service providers are simply dumb pipes. In opposition and now in government, I have waged something of a campaign to that effect. According to one school of thought, ISPs are there simply to channel the content to homes, and should not interfere with what goes down their pipes. It is often said that asking them to do so would be the equivalent of asking Royal Mail to open every envelope and parcel and have a look at the contents. In that context, the hon. Lady rightly identified a red herring in relation to both expense and the idea of regulation. I also believe that we should not over-regulate the internet, and that self-regulation should be the first stop before we consider Government regulation or legislation. However, I think it should be put on the record that ISPs can play a role, and, indeed, have played a very effective role in combating child abuse content online.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) on initiating such an important debate so early in the evening. I am glad that the Minister has enunciated the principle that ISPs are not merely a pipe through which information flows, but he has not taken the opportunity to point out that they could do more. Will he take that opportunity now?
Mr Vaizey
Now I understand why my hon. Friend is regarded as a rising star. I was about to say that ISPs could do more. My hon. Friend’s anticipation of my next sentence was almost uncanny, especially as I am now speaking off the cuff rather than from a prepared text.
We have seen that ISPs can do very effective work in removing child abuse websites. We also know—and I mentioned this during my speech on net neutrality last week—that they can manage the traffic that crosses their network in order to give their consumers a good service. A couple of weeks ago, I held a round table with ISPs and rights holders from the music and film industries and from sport to discuss what measures we could take to provide more legal content as the Digital Economy Act 2010 comes down the line. It seems to me that, given that rights holders are fully aware of the websites that are distributing their content illegally, ISPs could do more in that regard. However, what I learned from the meeting was that it is important to arrange for people to sit around a table, discuss the issues, and seek ways in which we can work together to make the system operate effectively.
After that meeting, which was productive—I felt that in two hours we had made substantial progress—I made it absolutely clear that I would follow it up. It would not be a one-off meeting that we would forget about, perhaps returning to it in a year’s time. I should like to offer the same opportunity to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes, and perhaps to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and other interested Members, as well as to charities and other organisations that are involved in the debate.
If we do have such a meeting, it must not interfere with, or cut across, the important work that UKCCIS is doing. However, I think it important for the side that is concerned about the issue—which consists of most of us, especially those of us who are parents—to sit around a table with ISPs, air their concerns, ask questions, and establish what further action they can take, and for the ISPs to respond. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes that if we have such a meeting, I will not leave it there. We will see what progress we make, and we will follow it up.
Claire Perry
It is uncanny how the Minister is anticipating my questions. I can see why he is a risen star.
I should welcome the opportunity to participate in such a round table, and I know that many other Members would as well, but does the Minister agree that it must not be simply more jaw, jaw? What we need is a time frame for improvement. I think that there is now almost universal acceptance that we have a huge problem. The fire is burning out of control, and we need to be specific. We need to say, “Clean up your house within a certain time, or we will come and clean it for you”.
Mr Vaizey
The House will unite in describing me as a risen star. It would probably be accurate to say that I have risen as far as I am going to rise.
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that it should not be just jaw, jaw. I do not want to set any hares running, which is what I seem to do every time I talk about anything to do with the internet, but I think that the meeting with the rights holders and internet service providers was productive both because it was probably the first time they had sat around a table with an honest broker—me, representing the Government—sitting between them, and because we have the Digital Economy Act 2010 on the statute book, controversial though it is. If anyone ever wants to start a Twitter storm, they should write something about net neutrality or the Digital Economy Act. Especially if they write that they are in favour of that Act, they will then see what comes.
It is important that we impress upon ISPs that we take this issue very seriously. Trite though it may sound, it is also important for people to know that sitting around a table and exchanging views can be an effective means of getting across both the views of the ISPs and the huge concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes on behalf of her constituents and the country at large. She has made this an important issue and raised it in Parliament. It is perfectly legitimate for the ISPs to raise issues such as costs and regulation because although, as my hon. Friend pointed out, they make £3 billion in profit, it is important also to remember that we, as users of the internet, rely on them to make those profits so that they can invest in the broadband infrastructure and we can have the best superfast broadband in 2015.
Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The debate is concentrating on the issue that matters most, which is extreme pornography. We are not concerned about nudity or ordinary sex. Most of us have a naked body, and very few of us inherited celibacy from our parents. The Minister mentioned the Royal Mail. Sending pornography through the mail is illegal. Can the Minister say whether the six ISPs who are currently providing the channels in question are the organisations who came to his meeting, and if they were not, will he have them in as well please?
Mr Vaizey
We had four of the main internet service providers, I think. I do not want to get too carried away and go to the other extreme. The ISPs in the UK do act to take down illegal content where it is pointed out to them, and they do hugely important work in taking down child abuse images. With the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend, who has inadvertently signed an early-day motion put forward by a Labour MP calling for an open internet—a slight distortion of my speech on net neutrality—we are, to a certain extent, talking about ordinary sex. We are talking about preventing children from having access to inappropriate content, and how we can work with ISPs to make it that little bit more difficult for them to do so.
My free-wheeling conclusion to this speech has probably not been helpful, so it might be helpful if I pull together a coherent final few remarks. We believe in an open lightly regulated internet. The internet is, by and large, a force for good. It is central to our lives and our economy, and a Government have to be wary about regulating or passing legislation. Nevertheless, the advent of the internet has brought a number of problems. One of them is the proliferation of images of child abuse, which I believe is being dealt with extremely effectively through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and UKCCIS, with the co-operation of ISPs. ISPs remain under an obligation to take down illegal pornographic content, which can extend beyond child abuse images, but there remain, from my position as a Minister, two issues. One of them is access to illegal content in terms of music, film and the creative industries, on which I am working with ISPs and rights holders. I take the second issue very seriously as a constituency MP alone: how we can work harder to ensure that it is more difficult for our children to come across inappropriate adult content? I firmly believe we can make progress, in co-operation with the ISPs, and that we can proceed on the basis of self-regulation. As I have said, I think it is important that we meet and sit around a table to exchange views, and I look forward to brokering such a meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes and a number of organisations she deems to be appropriate.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(14 years ago)
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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(14 years ago)
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Mr Lidington
We have given particular support to the work of the European Union’s Committee on Missing Persons and we donate to its annual budget. As hon. Members know, the CMP has so far found just under 700 sets of human remains, both Greek and Turkish Cypriot.
[Official Report, 16 November 2010, Vol. 518, c. 232WH.]
Letter of correction from Mr David Lidington:
An error has been identified in the 10th sentence of the fourth paragraph of the closing speech of 16 November 2010.
The correct sentence should have been:
Mr Lidington
We have given particular support to the work of the United Nations Committee on Missing Persons and we donate to its annual budget. As hon. Members know, the CMP has so far found just under 700 sets of human remains, both Greek and Turkish Cypriot.
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High Speed 2
(14 years ago)
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Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to open this Adjournment debate on the principal infrastructure project of our time: High Speed Rail 2. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir.
The railway system of Great Britain is the oldest in the world. It developed from a patchwork of private local rail links provided by entrepreneurs, and via amalgamations, temporary state control, nationalisation, highly regulated privatisation and part-renationalisation it became today’s system, which is, as one of my colleagues on the Transport Committee has said, “neither fish nor fowl”.
It seems that this country has tried every conceivable governance model for rail, yet the subject remains contentious. I should like to deal with three questions. First, should a high-speed rail route run through Buckinghamshire—specifically, the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty—against the wishes of local people? Secondly, should any area of the country be forced to accept high-speed rail? Thirdly, if transport resources and capital are scarce, what is the best approach to relieving that scarcity? I intend to demonstrate that High Speed 2 should not be run through Buckinghamshire or any area of the country and that a new, more classically Liberal and Conservative approach should be taken towards British transport policy.
I acknowledge the help and support of my Buckinghamshire parliamentary colleagues in preparing this speech. However, I have not sought their approval for this final version. My colleagues in the Government have emphasised that their opposition does not necessarily extend beyond the route. I also acknowledge the large number of high-quality submissions I have received from the people of Buckinghamshire. I am sorry that time has prevented me from including all their important points.
I should like to make clear my support for the Government’s intent. I am certain that the Government—the Transport team in particular—are fully committed to this country’s economic renewal and all-round success, and I applaud them for it. I am most grateful to the Secretary of State for confirming that the public consultation will cover not just the route, but the strategic case for high-speed rail. I am relieved that the Government will make their arguments with an open mind. I shall try to do likewise.
First, on local issues, should a high-speed rail route run through Buckinghamshire, specifically the Chilterns AONB? The Chilterns AONB is a rare, precious landscape benefiting not just those who live there but the millions who visit every year from across the country, particularly, due to its proximity, from London. I have lived adjacent to the AONB for almost three years and can confirm that it is one of Britain’s most beautiful and ecologically rich landscapes.
The preferred route of HS 2 crosses the AONB at its widest point, in contradiction to the policy followed for HS 1. In Kent, the route of HS 1 was amended to avoid the North Downs AONB. By contrast, HS 2 appears to have been deliberately routed through the least spoilt, widest part of the Chilterns.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned High Speed 1. HS 1 was introduced in Gillingham and Rainham, in Kent, about a year ago and there are lessons to be learnt from that. Does he agree that a new fast service should not be introduced at the expense of the existing train lines? The number of services from Gillingham to Victoria and Cannon Street stations was cut. Lessons have to be learnt. The routes, services and timetable cannot be changed at the expense of HS 1. Another lesson has to be learnt in terms of cost and affordability: HS 1 fares in Kent have increased by 30%.
Steve Baker
I agree. I shall return to the economics of HS 1 later.
Some 59 different protected species have been recorded within 1 km of the route of HS 2. The recommended route involves tunnelling directly through an aquifer, risking reducing the water table and exacerbating low flow in the Chess and Misbourne. It also risks possible contamination of the ground water. The environmental impact of the recommended route of HS 2 would be enormous. I am therefore calling for an official environmental impact assessment of the preferred route well in advance of the planned consultation, so that interested parties can fully digest its findings. In Kent, the route was altered to run beside the existing M20, a major strategic transport corridor, which reduced incremental noise pollution and landscape damage. I am surprised that a similar approach has not been adopted for HS 2. The M40 in my constituency is infamous for its proximity to housing and for its meandering path.
Opposition to high-speed rail is substantial in Buckinghamshire. On 7 November, an HS 2 rally took place in Great Missenden, where more than 2,000 people demonstrated their opposition. At the rally, the noise that HS 2 will make was played to the audience. Many were shocked by what they heard. The noise over the speakers may or may not accurately represent what HS 2 will sound like, but it reinforces the need for HS2 Ltd or the Department for Transport to provide noise maps and proper analysis of the noise impact that people will face. HS2 Ltd said, in a letter dated 8 October about noise assessment studies:
“On the subject of noise assessments, an Appraisal of Sustainability is currently being finalised and will be published ready for the launch of the consultation in the new year”.
We are impatient. It is now well over a month since then, but there is no sign of any further information. It is unacceptable for HS2 Ltd to keep delaying this important study.
Part of the planned preferred route slices through a corner of my neighbouring constituency at Denham in Buckinghamshire. The route enters the constituency through a site of special scientific interest in the Colne valley. There is no doubt that the railway line, which at that point would be on some type of viaduct, will have a seriously adverse impact on the environment. For example, the railway would culvert the River Colne along a several hundred yard stretch in an area where there has been a long struggle to maintain the rural aspect of a river valley that has significant environmental importance. With all this in mind, will the Minister please ensure publication of the environmental impact assessment at the earliest possible moment?
There is no benefit to Buckinghamshire from accepting high-speed rail. The project would have to be bullied through against the well-grounded wishes of those affected, causing not just the environmental damage described but also infringing the property rights of large numbers of people. Doing so would thoroughly undermine the Government’s commitment to increasing people’s power over their own lives. From Buckinghamshire’s perspective, the answer to whether HS 2 should run across the county is, of course, a resounding no. Buckinghamshire people are bound to object to a programme that would merely blight our beautiful county and trespass on local people’s businesses and the quiet enjoyment of their homes. I find myself asking, “Should any area of the country be forced to accept high-speed rail?”
Having had the privilege of living in many areas of the country throughout my adult life, it is my view that Buckinghamshire’s arguments would find parallels in most parts of the country, particularly those with designated areas of outstanding natural beauty. Why should anyone tolerate the demolition of their home or business? Why should anyone accept the ruination of a swathe of countryside? Why should anyone agree to so much noise and disruption? The answer, of course, lies in the national interest.
To justify so grotesque an intrusion into property rights and local collective enjoyment of the natural environment, the Government must be certain that the benefits of HS 2 to the whole nation would far outweigh the high costs that would be imposed along the route. Clearly, if a high-speed rail network will usher in a new age of incomparable prosperity for the whole country, regenerating the industrial north and reuniting it with the south, we must all support it.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He makes a strong case, as one would expect from a constituency MP working on behalf of his constituents. Does he accept that there may be some benefits for his constituents? The alternative to high-speed rail is that people do not travel or—more likely—that journeys are made by air or by road. That has an impact on the environment in the form of air pollution, for example, and noise nuisance, which might also affect his constituents.
Steve Baker
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I will return to some of those points, in particular how we make a judgment between road, rail and air travel.
If it is not true that high-speed rail is in the national interest, and if such a project will offer only marginal and uncertain benefits at vast expense, it would be in no one’s interest. I am delighted that the Government wish to ensure the prosperity of the whole nation, but it has not been demonstrated that HS 2 will deliver that. To justify such a grievous impact on the people and landscape of Buckinghamshire—and indeed along the entire length of the route, wherever it is located—the Government must place the economic and environmental case for the programme beyond all doubt. I do not believe they have yet done so.
High-speed rail is not commercially viable, so the expense is justified with a wider cost-benefit analysis. That analysis relies on assumptions, including excessive demand, generous benefits and a flawed analysis of the alternatives. I shall only touch on each point today, but I am sure that campaigners will furnish us with full details during the course of the inquiry.
The projected increase in demand is open to challenges that include demand saturation, a broken relationship with GDP, out-of-date data, neglect of new technology, and inadequate anticipation of competition from classic rail—a problem that blighted HS 1. The case for benefits neglects the fact that many of us work on the train, and it depends on implausible levels of crowding. The Department for Transport’s alternative, Rail Package 2, is paid too little attention, despite meeting demand with less crowding than would occur should the HS 2 programme go ahead. At £2 billion, the package is much less expensive. It is better value for money and capable of incremental delivery, setting it free from the risks associated with long-range economic forecasting. Rail companies could lengthen trains to nine, 10 or 11 cars. That would increase capacity from 294 to 444 seats—an increase of 51%. Unused first-class capacity could also be swapped for standard seats, thereby further increasing total capacity.
It is a myth that the UK lacks a fast national railway network; we have had one for a long time. We have routes capable of 125 mph, with quicker rail journey times between the capital and the five largest cities than in other major western European countries. For instance, the average journey time in the UK is 145 minutes. It is 151 minutes in Spain, 184 in Italy, 221 in France and 244 in Germany. In short, it appears that for £2 billion, the Government could have a complete, low-risk but unglamorous solution to the problem of rail capacity, and rather sooner than HS 2 could be delivered. Therefore, I am not convinced that £30 billion—or more—of taxpayers’ money would be wisely risked on HS 2.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that every infrastructure investment and transport initiative imaginable could, in the short term, be done more cost-effectively with the sort of incremental approach he has just mentioned? That does not take away the need to think strategically, and occasionally to do things that are more than just incremental.
Steve Baker
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point that we should explore at some length. In the final part of my speech I shall set out why I think we have been taking the wrong approach to infrastructure in this country.
Targeted investment in existing infrastructure would ultimately offer greater benefits to the whole country not served by HS 2, including the south-west, south Wales, East Anglia and the north-east. Such an approach would provide a visible demonstration of productive investment during a time of austerity. I am aware that the environmental case for HS 2 can be similarly attacked, but given the time, I shall simply quote Mr Steve Rodrick, chief officer of the Chilterns Conservation Board:
“The case for HS 2 is largely built on capturing the internal aviation market, but 80% of all journeys between Manchester and London already involve the train…These trains will use double, possibly triple, the energy of normal trains. Where’s that energy going to come from? You either have to bank on nuclear coming on stream or, more likely, power stations running on fossil fuels, which will involve significant carbon emissions.”
I also recommend Christian Wolmar’s 15 September article for RAIL magazine, which states that the arguments against HS 2 are mounting. His tour de force concludes by explaining that HS 2 would absorb money that would otherwise be spent on classic rail in an environment of reduced funding. He writes:
“We cannot have it all. Let’s work to protect what is essential, rather than trying to reach for the moon.”
Finally, I will turn to rail policy and transport strategy in the round. If transport resources and the necessary land and capital are scarce, what is the best approach to ensure optimal resource allocation? It has long been argued by the Conservative party, as it was once argued by Liberals, that unhampered social co-operation in the free market is the most efficient and effective way to allocate resources and relieve scarcity. With that in mind, I asked the House of Commons Library to prepare a summary entitled “Price controls and state intervention in the rail market.” It is not, of course, a simple statement that there are no price controls or state interventions in the rail market; it is six pages long and covers passenger franchise specification, the control of fares and rolling stock procurement. It also sketches the process of almost continuous organisational change that has dogged rail since nationalisation in 1948. Contemporary rail is not characterised by property rights, freedom to contract, open competition and unhampered prices.
My task today is not that of setting out a new free market transport strategy, and I will not pretend I am able to do so. However, I wish to emphasise that rail, and road transport in particular, are not capitalist systems in the conventional sense but hybrid systems of heavily regulated and subsidised public and private companies. We have inherited a rail system whose franchise agreements descend into such detail as specifying a “biennial talent management programme” and even “time with your manager sessions.” That is not freedom to contract, and clearly rail operators are not free to set market fares.
Of course, I do not want fares to rise any more than my colleagues do, but we should admit that the rail system does not operate in a free market and that therefore economic calculation is likely to be hampered, if not irrational. We simply cannot know whether today’s rail economics are optimal, but it seems likely that they are not.
Jo Swinson
The hon. Gentleman is making the point that the current rail network is not a truly free-market, capitalist system, but will he not accept that there is a role for the state to play in markets where there is market failure—for example, where there has to be a national network—as has been well documented by many economists? Will he also confirm that he stood on a manifesto platform at the election that promised to
“begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds”
as the “first step” towards achieving a vision of a
“national high speed rail network to join up major cities across England, Scotland and Wales”?
Steve Baker
I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me an opportunity to deal with that point, in which I see she takes some pleasure. In the first place, I note that economists take a range of views on these matters, and mine are perhaps rather more free market than most. On the second point, about the manifesto, Conservative candidates across Buckinghamshire stood for election saying they would oppose HS 2 and knowing that that was in contradiction to the manifesto. I personally made it clear at the time that I would oppose HS 2.
If it is true that economic calculation is likely to be hampered, if not irrational, under the present system—I am certain that it is—we should not be surprised that there is so much disagreement about economics in respect of rail. We should not be surprised when the Institute of Economic Affairs estimates that the return on HS 1 is less than half of 1% of the Government’s investment per year. Nor should we be astounded that some markets for high-speed rail already show signs of saturation. For example, demand on the lines from Tokyo to Osaka and Brussels to Paris is not growing anywhere near as fast as forecast. According to the Financial Times, China is reviewing its high-speed rail plans for affordability and practicality. Its latest high-speed line is operating at less than half capacity, and it is projected that the lines will never make enough money to repay the large loans used to build them.
I shall leave the last word on the economics of high-speed rail to the IEA’s Dr Richard Wellings, who wrote in relation to High Speed 1:
“Perhaps an unsubsidised international service could just about cover maintenance costs, with the sunk capital effectively written off. But far better returns could almost certainly be achieved by shutting down the line and disposing of the assets—which include substantial plots of land, tunnels under London and the Thames, and large amounts of scrap metal.”
HS 2 should certainly not be driven through Buckinghamshire, where it would have an egregious effect on some of our finest countryside, but it is not clear at all that HS 2 should be driven through any part of our country. HS 2 appears economically irrational: it requires tens of billions of pounds to increase the UK’s transport capacity by about 1%. Less money could be better spent. Moreover, that economic irrationality is almost certainly attributable to the prevailing orthodoxy in rail policy. It is an orthodoxy of planning, not the free market. We are at the end of a wasteful century of socialisation. Today, the basis of transport and, more broadly, infrastructure economics presupposes planning. It should therefore be no surprise that transport is characterised by scarcity, excessive prices and political tension.
To return to where I began, I applaud sincerely the Government’s noble intent, but I note that rail has not been governed by the free market for a very long time. There is no doubt that this country needs good-quality infrastructure. We should create the conditions in which unsubsidised enterprise can deliver the optimal solution. That would be the classical Liberal and Conservative approach. In my view, the solution that would emerge is not likely to be high-speed rail. I believe that this programme should be cancelled.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. A number of hon. Members wish to speak, and obviously time is limited. I hope to start the winding-up speeches by 10.40 am, so I urge all hon. Members to be reasonably brief in their speeches. I call Frank Dobson.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
When I first looked at the plans for High Speed 2, I was principally concerned with its immediate impact on my constituency where it comes into Euston station. Its effect there would be the demolition of 350 flats, about two thirds of a small park, St James’s gardens, being concreted over, a massive inhibition on the much-needed rebuilding of Maria Fidelis Catholic girls secondary school, and problems for people in the Primrose Hill area, whose homes would be tunnelled under in a big way. However, the more I looked at the proposal, the more I thought that it was not just a matter of the damage that it was likely to do in my constituency, but that the whole project of bringing the line into Euston station and other aspects of the proposal were daft and expensive.
In saying that the London terminal should be Euston station, the projectors had to come up with ways of coping with the fact that Euston station is not on the Heathrow Express line and is not intended to be on the Crossrail route, so it does not have major connections that would be important for High Speed 2. To cope with that, the projectors proposed building a sort of super-parkway station at Old Oak Common—more commonly known as Wormwood Scrubs—and then rebuilding Euston as well. Bringing the line into Euston would also involve the boring of a 5½ mile tunnel, which as we all know is a fairly expensive item.
If the projectors had instead proposed that the line came into Paddington station, that would have made sense, because Paddington is already the terminus for the Heathrow Express and will be on the Crossrail route. The idea of coming into Euston seems to spring entirely from the fact that trains from Birmingham have always come into Euston. There is no more justification for it than that.
When I looked at the plan more widely, it seemed to me that there were other major shortcomings with it. High Speed 1 has been a great success, and certainly the refurbishment of St Pancras station in my constituency—I think that I was the first person to suggest that St Pancras should be the High Speed 1 terminal—has been a great success. The idea that we shall have just one leg of a high-speed system coming into London but not connected to High Speed 1 seems simply stupid. If we are to have a high-speed rail system that is on the end of the high-speed system in the rest of Europe, it would not be a bad idea if it was connected to it, which is not the present proposition.
Similarly, if only one leg of the system from the north will come into London, that will mean that the system is vulnerable to a major crash or terrorist activity that would close down the whole system. I make no comment on where the line should run outside London, but it seems to me that rather than a Y-shape arrangement, there ought to be an H-shape arrangement, so that coming into London are two legs, at least one of which is directly connected to High Speed 1 and would allow trains to come from the east side of Scotland, and the north-east and Yorkshire, and, if they wanted to, come into Paddington. Other trains from, say, Glasgow or Manchester would be able to cross over and come into wherever the link to High Speed 1 was located.
The scheme is badly thought out and extremely expensive. It will be amazingly damaging for my constituency. It should be withdrawn and criteria should be established that set out what on earth it is supposed to achieve. We should then come up with proposals that go some way towards achieving that.
I will move on to the scheme’s affordability. I have, in theory, a degree in economics. I am convinced that economic forecasts for more than 18 months nearly always turn out to be total rubbish. I therefore do not give much weight to anybody’s economic forecasts or assessments of viability for or against the scheme. History shows that all the major railway engineering projects of the 19th century went bust, were involved deeply in fraud or, more commonly, both. I do not think that a major railway project has ever paid back the original investors, unless they have benefited from fraud, such as the huge Ponzi scheme of the line to the north-east. I think we must accept that such projects never will repay their investors and that there is no free-market solution. Apparently, the Institute of Economic Affairs wants to rip up High Speed 1.
Steve Baker
On coming to this place, I did not think that I would find myself much in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman, but I am delighted to hear him speak against rail. Would it not have been good if the market had stopped the rail programmes that he has mentioned because insufficient people freely chose them to make them profitable? Money would then not have been wasted on such infrastructure.
Frank Dobson
I have never heard anybody suggest that the 19th-century railway boom in every industrialised country in the world did not contribute substantially to the economic development of those countries. Perhaps some people at the Institute of Economic Affairs are so stupid and reactionary that they believe that, but that is by the bye.
The impact of the scheme on my constituency will be dreadful and I reject it on a parochial basis. I also believe that it is ill thought out and will not achieve most of the things that are sought by people who are in favour of a high-speed system in this country.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Like the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), I will focus on the narrow impact of high-speed rail on my constituency. I will make the point that development might not always be good. Rugby sits on the west coast main line, which has recently received substantial investment to focus on the city-to-city times for London to Birmingham, London to Manchester and London to Glasgow. A side effect has been a reduction in the service for towns such as Rugby. The service to the north-west is much less frequent because the city-to-city times have been improved by the trains not stopping at intermediate stations. The Rugby rail users group is campaigning for the reinstatement of those services and sees the development of high-speed rail as an opportunity to recover them, because city-to-city traffic might move from the west coast main line to HS 2.
The effects of HS 2 might not be entirely beneficial. I will give anecdotal evidence from France. For many years, I travelled to visit friends in Épernay, which is the home of Champagne. Épernay is about the same distance from Paris as Rugby is from London. In the ’70s and ’80s, I enjoyed a regular service to Épernay from the main east line out of Paris towards Strasbourg. When one turned up at the Gare de l’Est, there were plenty of trains. On making the same journey last summer, I found that there were no trains throughout the day. There was one commuter train from Épernay to Paris in the morning and one from Paris to Épernay in the evening. The reason was that the new TGV line through eastern France heads towards the bigger city of Reims, taking all of the traffic from the existing railway line. My concern is that towns such as Rugby may suffer from the introduction of a new high-speed rail line and receive a worse service.
The rail service is critical to the economic development of Rugby. That is recognised by the chamber of commerce. At a recent event, 50 businesses heard the case for high-speed rail and I understand that many left the presentation unconvinced and unsatisfied as to its merits. There needs to be a good understanding of business so that the project delivers benefits for it.
I will conclude because many hon. Members want to contribute, but I make it clear that the existing rail network will be affected by HS 2, and it is important that there is an assessment of the impact on the communities that will be affected.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
I will describe the context as I see it for such infrastructure improvements. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) spoke of economic forecasts. I start with the economic figure that the average gross value added per head in London is about £30,000, whereas in the English regions, it is about £17,000. Such a huge difference does not exist in any other country in Europe. One way in which that can be fixed is through infrastructure investment. Even now, there is massively more infrastructure investment in London, with 60% more infrastructure capital spend per head in London than in the regions. The high-speed rail project is fundamental to the regeneration of large parts of the north of England and the midlands.
We have discussed the business case so I will not spend much time on it, although we could argue more about it. The Department for Transport will have to publish the business case. The net benefit ratio in the preliminary publications was 2.7, which is pretty high. However, that figure includes assumptions about factors such as idle time and optimistic passenger projections—I think that the figure was 278%. That must all be worked through. The business case does not include anything about the economic regeneration of the north, the carbon savings from the modal shift from road and air to rail, or the freeing-up of airport capacity. It is not possible not to go ahead with the third runway without a project of this kind.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the project will benefit Yorkshire and the north-east, as it will the north-west. Does he agree that when the Y-shaped line is built—as I hope it will be—both legs should be built at the same time to ensure that the benefits that he rightly identifies are brought to the north-west and the north-east simultaneously so that one region does not suffer at the expense of the other?
David Mowat
I agree that the Y-shaped solution is the most sensible one, but I do not want to get into which part should be built first. I would like to quote a few numbers on the transformational impact of the potential scheme. We are generating, potentially, many tens of thousands of jobs. In January 2010 KPMG published a report which estimated an incremental increase in employment of between 29,000 and 42,000—not directly from constructing or operating the line but due to the economic and productivity impact on the regions of much closer links with London. In itself, 40,000 jobs would generate a huge bonus for the Exchequer, but none of that is currently in the business case that is being debated.
A lot—in fact, nearly all—of the comments up till now have been on the environmental issues surrounding the line. I do not want to minimise their impact, but the Government are the Government of the whole country, not just of the south-east of England and London. It is important that we properly weigh up some of the unpleasant environmental impacts against the greater good.
Jo Swinson
I am very much enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Does he accept that building high-speed rail with a Y shape going as far as the north-west will bring benefits to other parts of the country, including Scotland? Extending high-speed rail to Scotland would cut the journey time from four and a half hours to more like two hours. Even as it is being built, it will start to decrease the journey times because people will be able to change trains part way through, if they wish.
David Mowat
I certainly agree that, in time, the line needs to go to Scotland. I have very much bought in to the productivity improvements and the step change in how we do business in the country that could be achieved with such a line—so, yes, I agree.
Going back to the environmental impact, it is obviously right that compensation is paid and that we do the right thing by the people whose property rights are being impacted. However, that cannot be our pre-eminent concern.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the environmental impact is about more than landscape? I think he was making that point. Environment is about people, communities, jobs and productivity as much as it is about the landscape that we might enjoy through the window of a train or, indeed, of a car.
David Mowat
I accept that. Indeed, where we have areas of high unemployment, the ability of people who live there to enjoy their environment is much less than it would be otherwise. The Government also have a duty to take into account the impact on prosperity and employment throughout the country.
I want to make a couple of slightly more detailed points. It is important that whatever we build is linked to Heathrow. Those are probably the Government’s plans, but it seems to be absolute nonsense to build a high-speed rail link to the north and not to link properly Manchester airport and Heathrow, so as to see some of the traffic from Heathrow move.
I am of the view that the line needs to go to Euston and should not stop and link to Crossrail. I am not an expert, but Euston seems to be close to the business centres of London, so the impact of achieving that would be substantial.
I would like to see a spur to Warrington and Preston as soon as possibly, but I realise that the Minister might not think that that is her highest priority.
With reference to an earlier point, not linking High Speed 2 with High Speed 1 would be absurd. In my understanding of the initial business case for High Speed 1, the reason why we went into St Pancras in the first place was to allow that line, eventually, to go north. We are now building a High Speed 2 line to the north, so it ought to be linked.
Finally, it is very important that the Government maintain their commitment to the plan and realise that they are the Government for the entire country, and the entire country needs this.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing this important debate.
I take a strong interest in the issue at two levels: strategically, as a member of the Select Committee on Transport and because High Speed 2 is a key component in the debate on our national transport infrastructure; and locally. Although the proposed route does not go through my constituency in Milton Keynes, it runs close by, just a couple of miles from my western border, which is close enough for me to have a say in the debate in a local context and to understand the justifiable concerns of many villagers along the proposed route.
I will put my cards on the table right at the start. From all the evidence that I have seen, there is a strong case for an additional north-south strategic rail route in the United Kingdom and for that route to be capable of running the latest generation of high-speed trains. However, I am far from convinced that the detail of the proposed route is correct.
We run the risk of an enormous and costly error in this country if we do not get the details right, which is why I warmly welcome the recent assurance by the Secretary of State and the Minister that the inquiry into High Speed 2 will examine both the strategic case and the specifics of the proposed route. Frankly, we get one shot at making the project work and, vitally, if it is to succeed, it must be done on the strongest evidence and commanding broad-based support in the country.
One strategic argument is that, instead of ploughing billions of pounds into constructing a High Speed 2 line, the money—smaller amounts even—could be better used upgrading what are known as the classic rail routes. I regard that as a false choice.
As any regular user of the west coast main line knows, it is already getting pretty close to capacity, even after the substantial investment and upgrades in recent years. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to go to Euston station at 7 o’clock on a weekday evening and try to board the Manchester train. Virgin has to employ people who are basically crowd-control managers to prevent ugly scenes. The line has other pinch points as well.
Steve Baker
Does my hon. Friend agree that ugly scenes as a result of scarce resources are typical of socialism?
Iain Stewart
My hon. Friend tempts me down an interesting line of debate but, in the interests of brevity, I will resist that temptation.
At the moment, the classic network has pinch points. Yes, certain upgrades could be made—trains could be lengthened by a couple of coaches, there is room for one additional train movement in and out of Euston at peak times and the speed on the line could be increased a little. All those things can be done, but they would only buy time.
The choice, however, is not between doing those things and investing in High Speed 2. If we look at the time frame for High Speed 2, there is a gap between the existing capacity and what is needed in current years. I believe we have to do both—upgrade the classic rail routes and plan for the long term with High Speed 2. Simply, the forecast increase in the UK population and our increased willingness and desire to travel more and in comfort, mean that the extra capacity is required.
I accept the general case that there should be a route from London to Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and cities in the north of England and in Scotland. However, it is important that the business case is rigorously tested. From a common-sense layman’s perspective, we need to challenge why certain aspects of the current HS 2 case seem to be omitted or rejected. Time constraints prohibit me from going into those in detail, but let me flag up one or two of the issues, which other Members have raised.
Why does High Speed 2 not connect with HS1? It is crazy not to connect them, in my view. I had a meeting with the chief executive of Crossrail recently, and I asked him, “Has anyone considered using Crossrail as a link between High Speed 1 and High Speed 2?” He said, “You’re the first person who’s ever proposed that to me.” Such a link may not be the answer, but it is surely the sort of issue that we should look at as we consider a multi billion pound scheme over many years. Has High Speed 2 been considered in the context of broader UK aviation policy? Should we not look at connecting Birmingham airport, Heathrow and other airports in the midlands and the south as part of our total transport policy?
Why are we not looking more at intermediate stops along the line? I have enormous sympathy for the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe, who said that Buckinghamshire would have all the pain but none of the gain because there would be no access point along the route. The French TGV system has intermediate stops at different points. This summer, I travelled on the line down to the Mediterranean, and there is a stop at Valence. It is constructed in such a way that it does not impede the fast trains that shoot through, but it gives access to many towns and cities in that part of France. If I may, I would like to put in an early bid for an Iain Stewart international gateway station to serve Milton Keynes and the surrounding areas.
There are justifiable environmental concerns, but I urge those who are concerned about the environmental impacts to look closely at other high-speed lines around the world. The use of proper cuttings and natural cuttings can minimise a lot of the noise and visual damage.
I want now to make a more strategic point. Everyone who objects to rail schemes believes that they will be ugly and unsightly, but they need not be. This country has a proud tradition of building infrastructure projects—particularly rail infrastructure projects—that enhance the environment. The Forth bridge, the Ribblehead viaduct and Brunel’s bridges and tunnels are things of beauty, and, done properly, the projects that we are talking about could actually enhance the countryside. I do not want to create some ghastly, ugly concrete jungle, but for goodness’ sake, if we are going to make High Speed 2 a national project, let us use it to showcase what we can do. I have mentioned examples of older infrastructure projects, but we could look at modern ones, such as the Millau viaduct in France, which enhances the environment.
It is absolutely right that we consider the strategic case to make sure that the numbers stack up. Equally, everyone along the route must have their say as to why the line should or should not go through a particular locale. However, let us do things with a positive attitude. We need High Speed 2 in this country and we get one shot at it. When we have the inquiry, which I strongly welcome, let us undertake it with a positive attitude.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing the debate. He has put a strong case on behalf of his constituents, and it was also interesting, given his ideology of free market deregulation.
I want to make a couple of points before asking a few questions. The coalition agreement was absolutely right to commit to high-speed rail, which is a potentially incredibly important and transformational project. However, there is no either/or choice between high-speed rail and the conventional railway network. The Government have done extraordinarily well to protect almost the totality of the £14 billion of planned investment in the rest of the rail network during the battles over the comprehensive spending review. With the possible exception of my beloved redoubling of the Swindon to Kemble line, no rail project has been abandoned as a result of the CSR or the commitment to high-speed rail. The hon. Gentleman should be reassured by that.
The bigger picture is the UK’s ability to meet its long-term carbon emission targets, but we need more robust data. Some quite high numbers are being talked about, and we have heard about 23 million tonnes of carbon being saved over 60 years. However, there is a question mark over some of the numbers, given that about 77% of the journeys quoted by High Speed 2 Ltd apparently increase carbon emissions, as 50% of passengers shift from less energy-intensive railway journeys to high-speed rail and another 27% make new journeys. Of course, that probably underestimates the impact on the conventional rail network, given that other people might take up the capacity that is freed up there and we might see a parallel modal shift from car journeys to conventional rail journeys.
The figures also underestimate the impact of the long-term plan, which brings me to my first question. What is the Government’s latest thinking on the long-term commitment to connections to Scotland and the north-east? I might even add Wales and the west. There is clear evidence that there will be a profound impact on aviation over those longer distances—they are longer than the initial London to Birmingham stretch. A company called Travelport, which owns two of the four back-office systems that support airline and high-speed rail bookings around the world, has suggested to me that in the first month after the introduction of a high-speed rail link over such a distance, one third of the air travel on the same route vanishes, and that aviation drops by two thirds within three months. If that is true when we eventually have longer high-speed rail links in this country, it will have a profound impact on our carbon emissions.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that air traffic north to south is already falling, so we should not expect a massive decline in air travel as a result of building High Speed 2?
Martin Horwood
I am not sure that that is right. I must confess past sins. I used to work for a marketing agency that had clients in Scotland and I am afraid that I regularly took the team on a flight up to Edinburgh. I am now very guilty about that, and it was probably very carbon-inefficient, but the truth is that high-speed rail could have a massive impact on such business journeys, on recreational travel and on other connections between Scotland and London. All the evidence from other parts of the world is that that impact is quite consistent.
Turning now to my questions, I want to ask first about the status of the Heathrow interchange in the Government’s plans. If one is trying to reduce carbon emissions, it seems illogical to make sure that people can get to airports even more efficiently, so I do not see the Heathrow interchange as particularly important. The fact that it is being retained even as a long-term objective or possibility might militate against the option pointed out by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who spoke of the logic of a connection between High Speed 1 and High Speed 2.
Secondly, I would urge sensitivity to local issues. Caroline Pidgeon on the London assembly has raised the issue of houses in London that might be only a couple of metres above the tunnel when it is eventually built. Even though those houses are built on London clay and often do not have deep foundations, the householders do not appear to have access to the hardship fund. I would welcome the Minister’s latest thoughts on that.
Finally, there is the issue of planning. I have long been an advocate of a democratic planning system. I have made the case for such a system to people who propose nuclear power stations and, for consistency, even to my friends in the wind energy industry. However, it is a bit more difficult to take a site-by-site approach with a long railway route; we cannot just take out Berkshire and expect there to be no impact on the rest of the network.
In that respect, I commend to hon. Members and Ministers the words of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which has taken an enlightened approach to this issue. It points out that High Speed 1 runs through the Kent downs area of outstanding natural beauty, adding:
“Noise from trains is barely noticeable compared to the background noise of traffic, while earth mounds and wooden barriers help conceal the line itself…No stations are proposed for HS2 between London and Birmingham, so like the Central Railway proposal it would not offer local benefits. HS2’s trains are likely to whoosh past in seconds unlike noisy diesel freight trains proposed to trundle along the Central Railway, so the noise impacts should be less but this still would mean ‘something for nothing’ for the communities it would pass through.”
The “something for nothing” argument is important. The CPRE suggests that a number of benefits could be built into the long-term scheme. It says that “Electricity pylons” could
“run along much of the route including in the Chilterns AONB and these could be undergrounded next to the track…Low noise surfaces could be installed on local roads to improve tranquillity…New and improved Rights of Way and Open Access Land could improve outdoor opportunities around the path of the route”.
It makes many other suggestions for improvements that would benefit people along the route as this important project is put in place. There may be environmental consequences—there is no escaping that—but the bigger picture is important. As I said at the beginning, this could be a transformational project, very important for our long-term goal of reducing carbon emissions, and one I strongly support from the Liberal Democrat benches.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
As we do not have much time, I will be brief. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing this important debate on a topic that is causing a great deal of concern up and down the route. We need to ensure that it causes more concern in the rest of the country, where people do not have the route coming through their back gardens and therefore do not realise how devastating it is going to be to communities and families.
The route will have a potentially devastating impact on my constituency of North Warwickshire. We face the prospect that the line as it runs in to Birmingham from the main line will branch off in my constituency, causing a huge amount of devastation to the villages of Gilson and Water Orton. The main line will continue further north, causing severe impact on the town of Coleshill and the village of Middleton. Potentially even more worrying, if the Y-shaped route happens, we might end up with the junction in my constituency, probably tripling the amount of blight and devastation in North Warwickshire. We do not know exactly where the Y-shaped junction is going to be, but there is a great deal of concern throughout my constituency. If the Y-shaped junction does end up in my constituency, it will probably be the single most affected in the country as a result of the route.
Christopher Pincher
Does my hon. Friend not agree that we need to know as quickly as possible where the Y-shaped route is going to diverge, so that residents in our part of the world—I represent Tamworth, just up the road from North Warwickshire—can begin to make dispositions as they see fit?
Dan Byles
I entirely agree and thank my hon. Friend. He and I have neighbouring constituencies and we are working closely together on this. We are watching closely, because if the Y-shaped junction is not in my constituency, it is likely to be in or close to his. People need to know about this issue. Knowing one is going to be devastated by something is one thing; believing one might be but not knowing is even worse. There are people on a route that appeared briefly on one map—with a dotted line that disappeared from subsequent maps—who were effectively blighted, but who were unable to take part in the exceptional hardship scheme or any other compensation scheme. They are blighted through uncertainty, not through an actual line on a map. It is important that that topic be addressed as quickly as possible.
However, I am going to be brief so that someone else can say a few words. I want to make two pleas to the Minister. The first concerns the exceptional hardship scheme. I ask her to look in detail at what has happened so far—at those who have been approved and those who have not—and satisfy herself that the current scheme is transparent and working properly. I have had constituents refused under the scheme, and who were given reasons that were not listed as factors on any previous document or in the frequently asked questions relating to the scheme. That suggests that the scheme is not transparent and that to a large degree, the panel is making it up as it goes along. It is fundamentally wrong for people, having looked at the published documentation and believed that they ticked all the boxes, to then be turned down on criteria they did not even know were to be considered.
Steve Baker
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a rule-of-law point, as classically understood? People should know well in advance what the rules are—fixed, well-known rules that affect their property.
Dan Byles
I entirely agree that it is a rule-of-law issue, and it is also a moral point. People understand that Governments need to make difficult decisions such as this, but they have to make them within a framework that is open, transparent and understandable. If it looks as though decisions are being made in a murky way, that completely undermines what the Government are trying to do. By definition, people applying under the exceptional hardship scheme are going through a difficult time. I urge the Minister to look at how it is working and to point out to the panel that it is not there to be a hard-nosed gatekeeper, but to implement a clear and transparent process in a neutral and even-handed way.
Christopher Pincher
Of course, there are many people who qualify for the exceptional hardship scheme but whose homes are blighted by the prospect of the railway, and by its actualité if it is built. Does he not think that the cost of that extra blight—which means that homes cannot be sold, so stamp duty is forgone by the Treasury, as is the spending power of the people who cannot sell their homes or who sell at a lower price—should be factored in to the business case?
Dan Byles
I entirely agree. Getting the compensation right is every bit as important as getting the details of the route right. In many ways, it would be far cheaper. The sort of figures we are talking about for compensating people are dwarfed by the sums involved in building the railway scheme. I urge the Minister, do not be cheap when it comes to compensation. If we have to do this and blight people’s lives, compensate them adequately. That is really important.
My final plea to the Minister is, will she please bash some heads together at HS 2 Ltd and tell it to stop refusing requests from local councils to come and brief officers and members? The chief executive of the council in my constituency, North Warwickshire borough council, has just written an uncharacteristically strongly worded letter to HS 2 Ltd expressing his deep disappointment that before the general election, it had agreed to come and brief officers and members, but said running into the election that it was then in purdah and could not do it. It is now a long time since the general election and it is still refusing to brief the council. Local borough and county councils need to understand what is happening in their areas. They do not and they are not getting the help they need from HS 2 Ltd. It might be a little over-dominated by engineers; it needs some people who can explain, communicate and listen.
Those are my two pleas to the Minister. Will she please look at the exceptional hardship scheme and compensation, and satisfy herself on those matters, because I do not think the system is working fairly? Secondly, please tell HS 2 Ltd to engage more, particularly with local borough and county councils.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
I call Craig Whittaker, but remind him that I wish to start the wind-ups by 10.40 am.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Weir. As people know, I represent the wonderful and beautiful constituency of the Calder Valley in west Yorkshire. Many would say, of course, that it rivals, or even exceeds, the beauty of Buckinghamshire. We live in an area that is rich in a history of industry, and more recently banking and financial services, as well as still being a major employer in manufacturing and distribution, with over 26% of our employees working in manufacturing. Imagine what economic benefits High Speed 2 would bring to those employees and manufacturers. Many of the 6,000 employees at the headquarters of Lloyds TSB and Halifax live in the Calder Valley, making our economy one of the most at-risk areas in Britain if we see a further slide in the banking and financial services industry.
I recently went to Paris on Eurostar from London. As we know, that line is Britain’s first high-speed rail link. It is incredibly useful to the economy of the south-east of England but not to Yorkshire’s, given that people can get a train and arrive at two different foreign capitals to do business more quickly than they can get a train in London and arrive in my constituency to do business. Pundits have spoken about the north-south divide in this country for many years. May I suggest that High Speed 1 to Paris has created not only a greater north-south divide, but also pushed the divide even further south? High Speed 2 would shorten that divide for Yorkshire.
The Calder Valley has a huge diversity of business.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I apologise for missing the earlier part of the debate; I was at another meeting. High Speed 2 will indeed provide benefits to Yorkshire. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those benefits will also extend in due course further north—for example, to Edinburgh where my constituency is located, and to other places in the north of England and Scotland?
Craig Whittaker
Without question, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Indeed, let us get the first leg of the line into Yorkshire first.
As I said, the Calder Valley has a huge diversity of businesses—ranging from sole traders all the way up to some fantastic, world-leading businesses at the cutting edge—that contribute a gross value added average of £3.3 billion to our country. Our employees have the highest productivity rates in west Yorkshire and are among the highest in Britain, at £43,700 GVA per employee. Why should we not have access to our capital and other major cities at speeds equivalent to, or even better than, those available to the French or the Belgians?
We in Yorkshire do not advocate reducing access to our cities by foreign business with High Speed 1; we merely ask for a level playing field so that we can compete and play our part in our country’s economic growth. High Speed 2 will give Yorkshire just that—a level playing field, so that we can grow and continue to be the beating heart of England well into the next century. It is a place that we have earned, and deserve to have.
I thank the Government for consulting on the Y-shaped model for HS 2. I give the Minister the guarantee that we Yorkshire MPs will do all we can to ensure that it happens.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Weir. I am pleased to be able to contribute to this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing the debate. I was glad to have the opportunity to listen to the views, opinions and concerns of right hon. and hon. Members.
The Labour Government brought forward the original idea for High Speed 2, and I welcome the fact that the coalition Government will continue with that project through the next stages. However, I note from reports in The Daily Telegraph over the weekend that high-speed rail is causing the Conservative part of the coalition some local difficulty, with at least three Ministers being publically opposed—including, if reports are correct, a Cabinet Minister. Indeed, the paper quoted the Secretary of State for Wales as saying:
“I would defy the party whip—be very, very sure of that.”
We will have to see whether Cabinet Ministers are willing to vote against the Government on this issue. None the less, the Minister who is here today obviously enjoys the support of the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who made a valid case for the economy of the north-west of England—as a north-west MP, I certainly agree with much of what he said—and she has the in-principle support of the hon. Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker).
A project of this size and scale will, of course, not be without controversy. Without doubt, good travel links between Britain’s major cities are central to our economy. We need a transport system that is high-capacity, efficient and sustainable.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in developing the eastern part of the Y, it is important that core cities such as Nottingham are included, so that they too can reap the benefits not only of faster routes to London but of better connectivity to Yorkshire and Birmingham?
Andrew Gwynne
When we go into the details of what is proposed, we certainly need to ensure that connectivity with the English regions—the hon. Lady makes a powerful case for the city of Nottingham—are included.
As the economy grows, people will travel for employment and leisure, and there will be more demand to move freight, something that is not sufficiently considered in relation to rail. The Labour Government rightly believed that improved transport capacity would be needed between our major cities from the 2020s, starting with the route from London to the west midlands, two of Britain’s largest conurbations. Projections show that by then the west coast main line will be at capacity. By 2033, the average long-distance west coast main line train is projected to be 80% full, and severe overcrowding will be routine for much of the time. There will also be a significant increase in traffic and congestion on the motorways between and around London, Birmingham and Manchester, far beyond the problems experienced at these locations today.
The Labour Government’s view was that high-speed rail would be one way to provide more capacity between the UK’s main conurbations in the long term. The extra boost provided by a high-speed line would substantially increase existing rail capacity. That would happen not only as a result of the new track but because the track and stations would make possible a far greater length of train, and because high-speed trains would be segregated from other passenger and freight services.
It is worth bearing it in mind that upgrading existing rail lines would yield much less capacity than a high-speed line and at greater cost in both money and disruption, but without most of the journey time savings. That is something that we saw with the recent £9 billion upgrade of the west coast main line; although the benefits were considerable, they were essentially incremental, coming after years of chronic disruption to passengers and businesses.
Journey time savings from high-speed rail will be significant. The journey time from London to the west midlands would be reduced to between 30 and 50 minutes, depending on the stations used. Manchester could be brought within approximately an hour of London, down from almost 2 hours and 10 minutes. Through-services from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London would be down to just three and a half hours.
The connectivity gains of high-speed rail will come not only from faster trains but from the new route alignments that comprise the proposed Y-shaped network of lines from London to Birmingham, and eventually north to Manchester and Leeds.
Mark Lazarowicz
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Labour party’s ultimate objective is that the high-speed line should go directly to Scotland, and that we should not rely on existing services for part of the line? Obviously, things cannot be done at the same time everywhere in the UK, but will he confirm that that is Labour’s objective?
Andrew Gwynne
When Labour was in Government it was always envisaged that the high-speed lines would eventually connect with Scotland. In the long term, that will be crucial to the economies of Scotland and the English regions.
The new network would overcome some of the limitations of the old network, which has three separate and poorly interconnected main lines, each with own its London terminus. An important factor is that the high-speed network would enable key local, national and international networks to be better integrated. In particular, including an interchange station with the new Crossrail line just west of Paddington on the approach of the high-speed line to central London would greatly enhance the benefits of both Crossrail and the high-speed line. A Crossrail interchange station could deliver a fast and frequent service to London’s west end, the City and docklands. The total journey time from central Birmingham to Canary Wharf could be just 70 minutes.
A boost to the west midlands economy is anticipated to the tune of £5.3 billion a year, and to that of the north-west of £10.6 billion a year at today’s rates.
Christopher Pincher
The hon. Gentleman said that there would be a benefit to the west midlands. Is he aware that I asked a parliamentary question of the Department for Transport in order to ascertain what the benefits would be to Staffordshire? The Department responded that it had made no such analysis.
Andrew Gwynne
I was referring to the west midlands metropolitan area, but I am not responsible for the replies given by the Department for Transport.
David Mowat
On that point, the figure cited by the hon. Gentleman of just over £5 billion came from the West Midlands chamber of commerce. The figure was generated in the region, and one would imagine that it is most unlikely that some of the money did not come from Staffordshire.
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that point.
If, in time, an extension of the network to Scotland was to proceed, there would be a benefit of nearly £20 billion to its economy. HS 2 believes that the benefits of high-speed rail far outweigh the estimated costs, with the project yielding more than £2 of benefit for every £1 of cost.
There are clearly several arguments in favour of high-speed rail. It is a possible solution to the expected increase in passenger numbers, it will undoubtedly slash journey times and it could allow a much better integration of existing rail services regionally, nationally and internationally. However, we have to take on board the fact that not everyone is in favour of high-speed rail. I accept that, as the hon. Members for Wycombe and for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) said, some communities will be impacted through the construction and operation of high-speed rail. The Labour Government were mindful of the fact that, in making proposals for a route, there has to be an attempt to minimise local impacts while achieving the wider objectives.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there would be merit in considering ways to give benefits to those communities impacted by the track—for example, by having spurs off the new tracks that offered interim stops on occasion?
Andrew Gwynne
That might be one solution to such concerns.
We need to ensure that people are fully consulted on changes that could affect their areas, and not only on the Chilterns or Buckinghamshire but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) said, on Euston and Primrose Hill. Indeed, my right hon. Friend made some powerful points.
The coalition Government must have meaningful, extensive and detailed consultation, particularly with the local communities affected, and they must be keen to listen and to balance the concerns of those communities, many of which we have heard about today in this debate. No route in a project of this significance will be without controversy, which is why there absolutely must be adequate consultation of the affected communities, together with consultation on the exceptional hardship scheme for those whose properties may be affected by proximity to the preferred route.
May I ask the Minister how detailed the consultation process about the plan for the new route will be? Will it give us a detailed account of the streets, properties and landholdings that will be directly affected by the planning process? Significant time will be needed to ensure that consultation is properly conducted and considered. I welcome the proposed exceptional hardship scheme for those whose properties may be directly affected. What time scales do the Government have to introduce provisions for owners of properties nearby the planned route that may not necessarily be directly affected by the construction? Finally, can the Minister tell me how many applications have been received so far for the exceptional hardship scheme?
The Labour Government proposed the high-speed rail that would link London to Birmingham and eventually to Manchester, Leeds and beyond, which is the widely backed “Y”-shaped network. I welcome the fact that the coalition Government, after a few wobbles, have come out and supported that network instead of their unworkable “S”- shape. That was perhaps not so much a U-turn as a “Y-turn”, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras has now thrown an “H”-shape into the mix.
I turn now to some specific issues. What consideration will be given to ensuring that the high-speed rail network is available to rail freight, which is an increasingly important part of the railway jigsaw? Does the Minister plan to have further talks with the Scottish Executive about possible network extension to Scotland in due course? Will she outline the time scale that the Government envisage for commencing construction of the first part of the network? Has her Department begun work on preparing the hybrid Bill that would have to be presented to Parliament to make the new network a reality in this Parliament?
The high-speed rail project could be of national strategic significance to this country, and I hope that we will be able to work across the House to secure a rail link that is worthy of a great country in the 21st century.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
In the brief time that I have available, I will try to run through the points made by right hon. and hon. Members, and I will write to them about any points that time prevents me from covering now.
I am very grateful to have support for high-speed rail from across the House, across parties and across the country. That support is very welcome. There was a particularly vocal presence in the debate today from Yorkshire, which was particularly welcome.
However, we recognise that it is vitally important to think with great care about the local environmental impact of the project. Of course, we had some very comprehensive accounts of the potential impact, first from my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) and then from my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles). It is important that they are here in Westminster Hall and able to put their constituents’ point of view.
I strongly believe that careful mitigation measures can eliminate the most intrusive local impacts of high-speed rail. Modern engineering techniques give us an expanding range of ways to use sensitive design to make transport infrastructure easier to live with and less intrusive; a number of Members have referred to the example of High Speed 1, where that mitigation work has been done with some success in many areas.
I believe that it is possible to find a solution that is balanced and fair; that generates the significant economic benefits of high-speed rail for the country as a whole, and that is fair to the local communities that are directly affected by whatever line of route is ultimately chosen. Hopefully, this debate will take us closer to finding a solution and choosing that route.
We intend the consultation to be inclusive, wide-ranging and comprehensive, providing a range of opportunities for Members and their constituents to go through these kinds of concerns about the impact on landscapes and communities. Our consultation is designed to run for about five months, which is longer than the statutory minimum. We take this process very seriously, because we know the gravity of the concern that is felt in some communities.
The business case for high-speed rail was discussed by a number of Members. We are absolutely confident about the very significant benefits that a line from London to Birmingham would generate and we believe that those economic benefits are even more significant when they are linked to a “Y”-shaped high-speed rail network that connects the capital with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
I welcome the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (David Mowat) and for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) about the importance of using transport infrastructure to try to remedy imbalances between economic prosperity in different parts of the country. There is strong local support in much of the country for high-speed rail.
In answer to the questions from a number of Members about Scotland, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne)—the shadow Rail Minister—has already pointed out, the “Y”-shaped network to deliver high-speed rail to Manchester and Leeds could enable us to deliver journey times to London from Edinburgh and Glasgow of about three and a half hours. There is also the issue of promoting the air-to-rail switch, which is so important to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). In due course, we certainly want to see a genuinely national network built, and that is why we are in regular dialogue with the Scottish Government. We are happy to work with them on establishing how we bring that network about in the future.
A number of Members have talked about the carbon impact of high-speed rail. I believe that high-speed rail can play an important role in our plans to develop a low-carbon economy, particularly by promoting the air-to-rail switch that a number of Members referred to. Even with our current energy generation mix, high-speed rail is a much lower-carbon option than flying.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe argued that the Government had overstated the expected increase in demand. He and a number of other Members sought to challenge the business case. However, there is no doubt that the benefits generated by the extension of high-speed rail to Birmingham will exceed the cost of building the line.
Furthermore, it is clear that there is already a significant crowding problem on our railways. The simple fact is that we need this new railway. Important parts of our rail network are already suffering from serious overcrowding problems. As my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) mentioned, one only needs to go to Euston on a Friday night to see how popular the railways have become. There is simply no realistic alternative that would give us the level of benefit that high-speed rail will generate.
Andrea Leadsom
Does my right hon. Friend the Minister accept, however, that greater consideration should be given to using an existing transport corridor rather than tearing through great swathes of English countryside?
Mrs Villiers
It is always the case that, when efforts are made to construct these major transport projects, there are advantages to using existing transport corridors. However, sometimes using those existing corridors is simply not possible. Nevertheless, the Secretary of State for Transport asked High Speed 2 to look again at the route that it had proposed and at the environmental impact of that route. In a very short time, we will publish a package for consultation that will take on board a number of the concerns that have already been raised with the Government and with HS 2, to mitigate the environmental impact of the project.
I want to go back to the points that were made about using upgrades to the conventional rail network to relieve the capacity problem. It is simply not possible to relieve the capacity problem without a new line. Without delivering a further significant uplift in rail capacity, some of our key transport corridors will become even more overcrowded in the years to come. I strongly believe that high-speed rail is the best way to deliver that new capacity, not least because it would free up space on existing networks for more commuter, regional and freight services. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) mentioned that issue and I think that there is potential for his constituents to benefit from the extra space on the west coast main line that will be released by high-speed rail. Dramatically improving connectivity between a number of our most important cities has the potential to change the economic geography of the country.
As for the environmental impact, I recognise that our plans for high-speed rail are already having an impact on some communities, even in advance of the final decisions on the project. That is why we have launched an exceptional hardship scheme, to assist those with an urgent need to sell their properties and move home.
The Secretary of State has made it clear that, as and when any final route is chosen, we will put measures in place to address blight, and those measures will go well beyond the requirements of statute. I say that in response to a number of points that were made about the exceptional hardship scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire had some concerns about how the scheme was working. I was not aware of those difficulties, so if he wants to write to me about the specific issues I will be happy to look into them.
Earlier this year, the Secretary of State visited the line of route that has been recommended by HS 2 Ltd. He acknowledges the vital importance of designing a new high-speed rail line in a way that will reduce local impact where possible and that will take on board the types of points that we have heard this morning.
We fully recognise the need to balance the benefits of the high-speed rail project with the local impact on landscape and communities. In the summer, the Secretary of State instructed HS 2 to consider how best to improve its recommended route 3 to reduce any negative social and environmental impacts. An initial report has already been published that identifies a number of ways to reduce problems on the northern part of HS 2’s preferred route. That work is continuing in relation to a number of other areas of sensitivity—
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. I am afraid that we have run out of time for this debate. We now move on to the next debate.
Youth Service
(14 years ago)
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Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Weir. It is with great pride, but also with sadness, that I open my first debate in Westminster Hall. I have a vested interest in this debate, in that I have spent almost all my working life as a youth and community worker, and Unite supported me in my election campaign. I am passionate about the sector. I have many important questions for the Minister, who I hope will address them all in his response.
I am proud to have been a full-time youth worker for many years in Nottingham, St Helens and Wigan. I loved my work, and I believe that my colleagues and I, who worked in a local authority-based youth service in partnership with voluntary organisations, made a difference to young people’s lives. Like all youth workers, we had a purely voluntary relationship with young people. They were not forced to come to our projects. The fact that they chose to relate to us without compulsion laid the basis for trusting relationships that enabled us to assist their informal learning and personal and social development. That is what youth work is. Youth workers are young people’s freely chosen and trusted adult supporters. They educate young people informally, support them, help amplify their voices and, critically, take their side when no one else does. It is part of society’s commitment to lifelong learning.
As official Government statements, academic reports and professional bodies recognise, youth workers enable young people to develop holistically, working with them to help them develop their voice, influence and place in society and reach their full potential. Youth workers recognise, respect and actively respond to the wider network of peers, communities, families and cultures that are important to young people, and seek through those networks to help young people achieve stronger relationships and collective identity by promoting inclusivity and equality.
Youth workers have long been experts in creating what is now called the big society. According to the Audit Commission, every £1 invested in youth work generates £8 worth of voluntary activity. Youth workers are trained to recruit and involve volunteers and to sustain their involvement. Some 500,000 volunteers work with established youth services, but volunteers do not come from thin air. They need to be encouraged and supported by professionally trained staff and, to be effective and happy, they need to volunteer in an organised environment. Youth and community work training equips practitioners to empower adults and young people in their communities.
In addition, youth workers are trained to raise funds to support their work. The state has never been the main provider in the sector. The last National Youth Agency audit of services showed that youth workers generated more than one third of the amount spent by local authorities on their youth services. I hope that the Minister will take careful note of the fact that cuts to local authority youth services also mean severe cuts to the voluntary sector and to the social enterprise and mutual organisations that provide youth services. For example, the current proposals to cut £2.6 million from Birmingham city council’s youth service mean about a £600,000 cut to the voluntary sector. He will no doubt be aware that the £2 million in cuts to the youth service in his county will practically wipe out voluntary sector funding as well. It is a fallacy to suggest that the voluntary sector can pick up the pieces left by a shattered local authority service.
On funding, incidentally, Lord Northbourne obtained an undertaking during the passage of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 that the Government would continue to collect youth service funding figures from local authorities. Will the Minister publish the figures for last year and tell me how they will be collected in future? The National Youth Agency used to do an annual audit of youth work, but I have been informed that now that its funding has been slashed, it will no longer be able to do so. I am also informed that Ofsted will no longer inspect youth work. Who will inspect it to ensure that standards are upheld?
I am proud to be introducing this debate almost exactly 50 years after Lady Albemarle produced her great report for the Conservative Government of the time. Her report introduced the modern youth service. In the 1950s, the early youth service had nearly disappeared as a result of cuts and general neglect. The voluntary sector and the early trade unionists who built the Community and Youth Workers’ Union, of which I am proud to have been president for nine years, campaigned hard for the Government to provide public resources and promote respect for youth work.
Lady Albemarle was asked to establish a committee in 1958 to consider those concerns. After two years of intense scrutiny, the committee recommended that specialist training for youth workers be developed, as it was a distinct educational profession. She and her committee recommended that youth centres be built throughout the country to provide places of warmth, free association, safety and fun, that national terms and conditions for youth workers and qualifications linked to those terms and conditions be introduced and that each local authority be funded to work in partnership with the voluntary sector to manage a youth service. The Conservative Government agreed with the recommendations of Lady Albemarle’s committee and laid a substantial foundation for the building of the modern youth service. A new public service depending largely on public investment was born.
Since that time, great progress has been achieved. In fact, Britain’s youth service—with its public funding and partnership with voluntary organisations, national professional standards and joint negotiating committee terms and conditions—has been admired throughout the world. It has pioneered many important developments in working with young people, including international exchanges between young people to help heal a war-torn Europe.
My sadness in presenting this debate comes from the recognition that those 50 years of progress could now come to an end. The youth service is likely to disappear shortly unless the Minister acts. Is he aware that the situation of the youth service is now so grave that the main professional journal in the field, Children & Young People Now, has organised a national campaign called “For Youth’s Sake”, and the main professional bodies and stakeholders have formed a campaign to save the service? The British Youth Council and the UK Youth Parliament, the recognised national bodies for young people, have formed similar campaigns and expressed concerns about rapidly deteriorating provision for the youth service. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) has also introduced early-day motion 1013 on the threat to youth services.
We need action now. Is the Minister aware that local councils value highly their ability to provide youth work directly, and are so concerned about the cuts, at least in England, that the Local Government Association recently published an excellent document, “Valuing Youth Work”? I am pleased to read in the foreword his quote that work with young people is not a “luxury add-on”. Has he read the powerful analysis of the cost-effectiveness of youth work by Unite and Lifelong Learning UK called “The Benefits of Youth Work”? If he has not considered those documents, I urge him to do so as a matter of urgency.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that cutting the youth service is incredibly short-sighted? Not only does the service give young people the opportunity to enrich their lives by taking part in interesting activities but it often prevents them from being drawn into antisocial behaviour or drug and alcohol use.
Julie Hilling
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, absolutely. I will talk more later about some of the studies that have shown that. If we destroy the infrastructure, it will take a long time and a lot of money to rebuild, as happened in Wigan in the 1990s when all the youth centres were closed. Wigan has not been able to regain the ground lost during that time.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate, but I remind her that the Labour Government planned to make 20% cuts. Does she feel that no cuts should have taken place in the youth service? Can she inform all those present where she would make the cuts?
Julie Hilling
I am not in the Government or even in the shadow Government, so I am not in a position to say where cuts should be made. However, making substantial cuts to a small pot of money—some £300 million is spent on the whole youth service throughout England and Wales, which is a very small pot of money nationally—does huge damage to the services provided.
It is with sadness that I report that Warwickshire county council is proposing to abandon its youth service all together, and it appears that Norfolk, Suffolk and Southampton city councils are planning to do the same. According to a recent survey of proposed cuts that was conducted prior to the comprehensive spending review by the National Youth Agency and the Confederation of Heads of Young People’s Services, 95% of services were predicting cuts during the current year, the majority of which would be in the region of more than 30%.
Bolton council has already had to cut £200,000 this year and is predicting a cut of £415,000 next year. Am I right to assume that the Minister is concerned about a cut of £2 million to West Sussex county council youth service, which covers his constituency? Does he support the thousands of young people across West Sussex who have been petitioning and campaigning against the cuts? The portfolio holder for the area, Councillor Peter Bradbury, admitted that young people had not been properly consulted. Again, is the Minister aware that consultation with young people on service provision is fundamental to the Education and Inspections Act 2006?
There is an illusion that mutuals, social enterprises or even the private sector will take up youth work provision. Although there are some excellent voluntary sector projects, there is little evidence that many providers are ready to take on the role of providing youth services. In any case, they are dependent on adequate public funding for the work. The staffing and resources of some services are already so depleted that even a small cut of 10% will effectively end their ability to function meaningfully.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In my constituency, Bramley and Rodley Community Action Trust provides a youth bank in the area. The trust also runs a youth inclusion programme, which helps people who are at risk of becoming involved in the criminal justice system. Does she agree that cuts to Leeds city council of 27% will mean that those services are at risk and that, as a result, we risk building up future problems of antisocial behaviour and criminal activity? With just a bit of funding, we could ensure that such organisations were able to continue providing those excellent services.
Julie Hilling
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I absolutely agree that it is a false economy to make such cuts to youth services. Historical evidence shows that youth services will be harder hit than other services. Local authorities will have to protect some of the services relating to safeguarding issues and the care provision for older people. However, youth services always get squeezed. They have always been Cinderella services and will have greater cuts imposed on them unless action is taken—in particular action to enforce the legislation that is in place, which I shall come on to.
Such cuts will mean the end of universal out-of-school services for young people. Since January 2007, through working in partnership with the voluntary and private sectors, local authorities have had a statutory duty to promote the well-being of young people aged 13 to 19 years—in fact, it is up to 25 years for those with learning difficulties—and to promote access to educational and recreational leisure time activities, which are referred to as positive activities. The legislation that supports youth work is described in detail in statutory guidance published in March 2008 under section 507B of the Education Act 1996. That statutory guidance sets out the requirement for local authorities to provide youth work in three areas: positive activities, decision making by young people and 14-to-19 learning. The guidance refers to the fact that educational leisure-time activities are explicitly linked to youth work methods and approaches. The purpose of both forms of positive activities—educational and recreational—is the improvement of well-being. The definition of well-being in the legislation reflects the five Every Child Matters outcomes: be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution, and achieve economic well-being.
The statutory guidance also refers to “Aiming High for Young People: A Ten Year Strategy for Positive Activities.” That strategy concludes with a very strong statement that recognises high-quality youth work. The Government’s view is that high-quality youth work delivered by third and statutory sectors is central to delivering our ambition of increasing the number of young people on the path to success. Is the Minister concerned about the ability of local authorities to fulfil their statutory responsibilities? If they do not fulfil their statutory responsibilities, will he intervene under sections 496, 497 or 497A of the Education Act 1996?
Would it not be helpful to revisit the recommendations of the “Resourcing Excellent Youth Services” document? Instead of aiming low for young people, as the Government appear to be doing, would it not be better to return to the recommendations of the “Aiming High for Young People” document? Does the Minister recognise that 70% of funding for the voluntary sector, particularly for youth services, comes from local authorities, and that decreasing that funding reduces the potential of what he might term big society organisations?
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the big problem with the big society is that it is predicated on the belief that volunteers will do for free what paid youth workers do for a wage? Does she agree that the big society is something of a political convenience, given the huge cuts that will be made to local authorities during the next three years? The situation will be incredibly difficult for those voluntary and community groups that are providing excellent activities and outreach work—street-based youth work—for young people. It will be very hard for them—
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the hon. Lady that interventions must be brief.
Julie Hilling
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Yes, I absolutely agree. It is a bit of a fallacy to think that volunteering is not already taking place, as 500,000 people already volunteer to work with young people. They are effective in volunteering activities only if they are supported in their work financially and by professionally qualified and trained staff. Those staff can assist them in developing their work and can ensure that their work is of good educational value to young people.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I want to be clear about this. All of us accept that the debt situation is difficult at the moment. The hon. Lady referred to some 70% coming from local authorities to pay for such services. Is she saying that she would maintain the grants for this type of work on an ongoing basis?
Julie Hilling
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. Yes, absolutely. I am not simply saying that we should maintain the funding; I am saying that we should increase it. I will give some statistics at the end of my speech that will show how positive intervention and positive activities with young people saves the state a great deal of money. Such funding is an investment and, as I said, if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will provide some statistics later to show how when a small amount of money—it is a small amount—is put into services for young people, it saves the state thousands of pounds on much deeper interventional work.
Mr Rob Wilson
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Lady says, much of which seems to focus on the negative side of what is going on. Has she paid any attention to, for example, the plans for the national citizen service and the positive things that that can do for society cohesion?
Julie Hilling
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. If he will bear with me, I will talk about the national citizen service in just a few moments.
In reply to a parliamentary question that I asked the Minister on 15 November, he did not respond to me about the rapidly declining fabric of the maintained youth service, but instead seemed to state that the national citizen service would compensate for the decline in other provision. I hope that I misunderstood him. However, if I did not, perhaps he can explain how allocating £370 million to the national citizen service for, in effect, short-term summer scheme opportunities for 16-year-olds will possibly compensate for the loss of the current youth service budget of less than £300 million per annum that runs for 365 days a year?
Does the Minister share my concern that many child protection and health and safety issues are raised by the fact that inspecting organisations with no track record in residential work and professional youth work delivery will be running the short-term national citizen service? I am deeply concerned that they do not have the capacity or the experience to operate outdoor activities and residential work according to the Department’s health and safety guidelines. Can he give me any assurances in that regard? Also, who will inspect the quality of the service? The youth service was previously inspected by Ofsted, which has commented on its rising standards over the past four years, when other services were often declining.
I welcome the fact that the Select Committee on Education is conducting an inquiry into youth services and that it will be examining the introduction of the national citizen service. Youth service professionals and many of us in this place are beginning to wonder whether the Minister actually understands what the youth service is. The youth service has been recognised in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom as an integral part of the education system. Does he agree with the Welsh Assembly Government, the Department of Education in Northern Ireland, the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and the Scottish Government that the youth service is an integral part of the education system?
Youth work is based on a voluntary professional relationship between skilled youth workers and young people, so it has a broad spectrum of influence and success. The various youth councils across the country and the UK Youth Parliament, which so successfully engages people in political education and civic involvement, simply would not exist without the support of local authority professional youth workers. At the other end of the spectrum, as the work of Professor John Pitts has clearly shown, the youth work method is the most effective means of reducing young people’s involvement in gang crime.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the youth service provides an important element in improving the employability of young people because one of the things it does is improve the soft skills that employers are crying out for?
Julie Hilling
Absolutely. I could not have put it better. The youth service is important in encouraging social and political education, social interaction and decision making. There are far too many distinguished reports to mention that demonstrate conclusively that youth workers play a vital role for young people in re-engaging them in education; making their lives healthier; improving their access to learning; strengthening information, advice and guidance; supporting partnership working; participating in structured leisure-time activities; helping them to stay out of the youth justice system; and encouraging them to play an active and voluntary part in their local communities.
Such successful work is achieved by a relatively small cohort of 7,000 professionally qualified staff, working with 30,000 trained youth support workers and, as I have mentioned, an army of half a million volunteers. Those staff work for local authorities and voluntary organisations, but local authority funding is the key. The values, occupational standards and skilled training are the glue that holds the service together. It is therefore with great sadness that I report that youth and community work training courses may now face wholesale closure.
The sector is really proud of its training courses, which are offered by about 30 universities and other providers. The courses are themselves a product of a “big society” kind of effort. The standards of the courses are validated by the voluntary efforts of professional education and training standards committees, which rely on volunteers to create and monitor standards. Those committees have decided to apply an important set of criteria on training courses, one of which is the requirement that students are recruited after proven and committed experience as volunteers or part-time youth workers. As a result, youth work students are deeply committed to their profession and have all volunteered in it. That is a model of the big society ethos.
Most mature students enjoy a second chance to learn and do not come into higher education through the traditional academic routes. They are community activists and organisers who are concerned to become skilled in what they do. The qualification for youth workers relies on the successful completion of 50% of field work practice. Around 60% of the students are women, and more than 30% are from black and minority ethnic communities. The high demands of placement learning mean that they cannot easily supplement their student time with paid work.
Despite their strong virtues, youth and community training courses, which became degree-level courses in September, have never received funding equivalent to that for teachers or social workers. The students, who are by and large older and less well off than others, have had less resourcing in higher education, but now the situation is even worse. Is the Minister aware that the proposal to remove funding for bands B and C will hit youth and community work courses, and can he give me an assurance that he will look into that with a view to reversing the decision for those courses? I can assure him that failure to do so would be the final nail in the coffin of a valuable service that, ironically, his predecessors created at a time of much higher national debt.
Reducing the deficit and cutting public sector spending is the order of the Government’s day. Whatever we might think about the cuts, we all have an interest in cost-effective public services, so I will finish by highlighting the exceptional cost-effectiveness of the youth service and youth work. It is estimated that for just £350 a year for each young person, all young people could access a good youth work offer. Current spending is £100 a head per annum for 13 to 19-year-olds. More specifically, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation commissioned an exercise on the cost of detached youth work, which found that a project that provided a full range of services and was in contact with 125 young people a week would cost £75,000 a year, or £16 for each contact. It concluded that for disadvantaged neighbourhoods, a systematic street-based youth service would cost a fraction of the amount spent on other services targeting that group. It cited, in particular, the £450 million budget for the Connexions service.
Other research has highlighted the relative costs of the criminal justice system and other forms of intervention, including youth work. The Green Paper, “Every Child Matters” stated:
“Society as a whole benefits through reduced spending on problems that can be avoided and through maximising the contribution to society of all citizens. For instance, a child with a conduct disorder at age 10 will cost the public purse around £70,000 by age 28”.
The Audit Commission’s report on the benefits of sport and leisure activities in preventing anti-social behaviour among young people estimates that a young person in the criminal justice system will cost the taxpayer more than £200,000 by the age of 16. The young person who is given support to stay out of the system, however, costs less than £50,000. Other comparative costings include: £1,300 a year per person for an electronically-monitored curfew order; around £35,000 a year to keep one young person in a young offenders institution; an annual average of £3,800 a year for secondary education; and around £9,000 per person for the average resettlement package after custody. Against those, £350 a year for each young person would be a small price to pay to unlock the rich benefits of community-based provision for all and to provide extra opportunities for personal and social development for those young people who, by virtue of life experience and circumstance, are so disadvantaged that they cannot successfully make use of mainstream services.
I could speak about the young people I have worked with over the years and the difference that youth work and youth workers have made to their lives, but I have spoken for long enough. I will end with a plea. We are entering a period that will be even harder for young people. They will have to deal not only with the normal trials and tribulations of entering adulthood but with unemployment, cuts to local services and higher costs for everything. I plead with the Minister to take action now to protect and invest in a highly cost-effective service. I ask him to please take action to defend youth work and youth services before it is too late. Youth work has always been known as a Cinderella service, but please let Cinders go to the ball.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. A considerable number of Members wish to speak. I intend to start the wind-ups at about 12.10 pm, so I encourage brevity.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) for securing this debate on what is undoubtedly an important issue. Young people deserve our support, and youth services are vital to all our communities. She is absolutely right that if young people get a better start in life, our communities are safer and more cohesive as a result. It is also correct to say that prevention—she gave us many figures on that—is better and much more cost-effective than simply waiting for the cure.
The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training—NEETs—is horrifying, and it is crucial that we engage those individuals in our communities. In my part of the world, Devon, 1,190 young people between 16 and 18—5.7% of the people in that age bracket—are unemployed, do not have training and, frankly, have very little hope. As the hon. Lady explained, that has a cost to society, and it is not insignificant. The figures vary, depending on how they are calculated, but those I have looked at show that each NEET costs around £97,000 over their lifetime. That figure could exceed £300,000, depending on the benefits they have to look for.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate. On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) about NEETs, in Medway, 666 people in a population of 260,000 are NEET. Does she agree with me that we need to do all we can to support organisations such as the Medway Youth Trust, a charity that does excellent work in giving people who are NEET support and help to move into working life?
Anne Marie Morris
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and endorse what he said. Such organisations should, undoubtedly, be encouraged.
We are missing one key piece: providing youth services must be about providing quality. It is not a matter of how much money is thrown at something but how it is spent to get the best possible result. I am lucky, because Teignbridge, which is my local area and a large part of my constituency, has an excellent youth services record. The portfolio holder described Mike Stevens, who is the leader of the unit in Teignbridge, as outstanding and said that, if she could, she would clone him. There are some extremely able people who deliver high-quality services.
There are two outstanding examples in Teignbridge district. In Newton Abbot, which is at the heart of my constituency, an organisation called Chances, which operates out of a building called The Junction, is responsible for giving many young people who are excluded from school hope and a future that they would otherwise not have. I have seen the kind of outward-bound courses that are offered and the engagement of the teachers who work there, and they are fantastic.
More recently, a new centre was opened in Dawlish, which is another key town in my constituency. It is called Red Rock, and what is special about it is that it is a fine example of the big society. I would take issue with the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who suggested that the big society was merely a convenient label. The centre evolved from the local business community, the local voluntary sector and the local authority working together.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The hon. Lady speaks about the big society. One imagines that that means that local voluntary and third sector groups will take over where public services are cut. In my constituency, we have had a meeting with a dozen local organisations that are fearful that their funding will be cut, and that they will be able to provide less, rather than more, in future.
Anne Marie Morris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. I shall turn to funding in a minute, because clearly it is relevant, but let me stick with quality, which is key.
That project involves real engagement, and it is not the intention of anyone—certainly not the county council—that group A should take over from group B. What people see in the future is an integrated approach among different parts of our community, which we should commend.
I believe that there is a misunderstanding about funding. The hon. Member for Bolton West spoke about cuts. It is known across the House that this country is plagued with a huge national debt, and that the Government have to look at the measures to be taken. However, they have not cut youth services. They have taken away the barriers between individual prescribed funding streams that central Government used to pass money down to local government, but the amount of money going from central Government to local government remains unchanged.
Anne Marie Morris
May I finish? Local government has been given the opportunity to use money sensibly. Ninety funding streams will be reduced to 10, and that will substantially reduce the bureaucracy. It will also liberate £7 billion-worth of funds for local authorities to use appropriately. There is certainly no intention that this should be about cuts between between national and local government.
Anne Marie Morris
I will allow interventions in a moment. Let me just clarify my point on funding. What we will see in local government is a review of what quality and value for money should look like. In speaking to my county council, I have found no evidence that youth services per se will be any harder hit than any other part of the budget. On community engagement, we are looking for more, not less, but before I move on, I am more than happy to give way.
Stella Creasy
Can the hon. Lady clarify what she thinks the cuts to the Department for Education’s non-school budget and the cuts to the voluntary youth sector development grants will mean? That central Government funding for youth services has been cut—that is a national cut in funds for youth services. What does she think will be the impact of that?
Anne Marie Morris
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am sure that in due course the Minister will clarify exactly how that will work, but my understanding is that it is not about reducing money but about taking away artificial barriers between individual pots of money.
Julie Hilling
To add to what my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, the cuts to the youth opportunity fund and youth capital fund were cuts in central Government funding, so this is not just about local authority cuts. In addition, money that was coming from the Department for Education specifically for youth work has been cut. That is a double whammy for local authority and area-based youth services.
Anne Marie Morris
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Again, she is talking about structure rather than amount. As the Minister will explain, we absolutely will support youth services because they are important. The hon. Lady mentioned several new initiatives, including the national citizen service. Actually, there is a new group in the constituency adjoining her own. It is called the Bolton Lads and Girls Club, and I hope that she will welcome it. I am lucky, because the national citizen service, which provides an outward-bound social action experience for young people, will see 900 places created across the south-west by Young Devon and the South West Consortium. That must be a good thing for the future.
Anne Marie Morris
If I may, let me get back to the principle. We have been asked to keep contributions short, so I will not take any further interventions.
Quality is key. In conversations that I have had with my county council, I have found that people like Mike Stevens and what he contributes are highly valued. That kind of provision is not at risk. What any responsible council must do is look across their patch for the best way to provide best-quality services. Our young people deserve no less.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) for securing this debate. I am sure that we have all seen in our constituencies the excellent work that youth services do. In Leeds West, there are several vital services. Earlier, I mentioned one of them—Bramley and Rodley Community Action Trust—and now I would like to highlight the role of another one.
Armley Juniors is a small group in my constituency. It is run by just three people in a deprived part of a constituency that already has low incomes and low educational attainment. Armley Juniors took over an old post office in the constituency and has managed to turn it into a youth centre with a kitchen for cooking classes. It also offers computer lessons and a communal area for children on the estate, and runs sports teams and outdoor activities during term and school holidays. It benefits from funding from Leeds city council and a peppercorn rent on its site, but, like many youth services across the country, it operates on a shoestring budget.
Leeds city council faces 27% cuts across the board during this Parliament, and the people in the dedicated team running Armley Juniors, whom I visited recently, are extremely worried about their future. Such issues may not register on the national scale, where we are seeing significant job losses and cuts across the board following the comprehensive spending review—indeed, in Leeds alone, we are facing the loss of 3,000 council jobs—but on the Heights estate in Armley, where Armley Juniors operates, the removal of funding would deprive young people in the community of the only communal space in the area.
The estate is a densely populated inner-city area with no playing fields, no other youth clubs and no sports halls. To make matters worse, Government cuts mean that the council now has to charge local youth groups for their use of school playing fields and community areas, which is a double whammy for groups such as Armley Juniors that need to use those facilities if they are to provide activities, especially sports activities, for young people.
Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that with a comprehensive spending review that will hit children and families even harder than other sections of society, the need for services such as those in her community will be even greater?
Rachel Reeves
I agree with my hon. Friend. As well as having some excellent youth services in my constituency, we have Armley prison, and the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West about the long-term impacts of cuts to youth services rings true to me. A lot of people who provide youth services in my area say that their aim is to ensure that young people from very deprived backgrounds do not become the future inmates of Armley prison. During these difficult economic times, it is very worthwhile considering long-term impacts. Many hon. Members here today will recognise that this is an issue in their constituencies, and I fear that the cuts will cost us more in the long term.
Alongside the cuts to the police in Leeds, there are cuts to sports funding in schools, which we read about over the weekend and on which we will hopefully—although I fear not—hear some more positive news this week. There are also cuts to free swimming, and cutting services such as Armley Juniors on top of all that will have costly implications for both the community and for Government spending in the long run.
Most of us remember the 1980s and the generation of young people who were condemned to the scrap heap then. I was at school in that decade, and remember well the funding cuts that meant that sports clubs and after-school activities were available to children if their parents had money, but that children whose parents did not have money and who lived in inner-city areas without open spaces or playing fields, missed out. I urge the Minister not to allow us to go back to those bleak days. The value of organisations such as those that we are championing today cannot be measured, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, just by their cost on a balance sheet. They educate, engage and inspire young people and make a huge difference to their lives. Cuts on the scale envisaged by this Government will devastate youth services across the country, and I urge the Minister to think again.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing this extremely important and interesting debate. I am not sure whether I will be able to share her passion, but I shall do my very best.
During my 10 years as a councillor before becoming the MP for North Swindon, this was one of the most important issues that came up in the residents surveys and in the public meetings that I held. Parents generally accepted that their children were well catered for during school hours, but there were often concerns about after-school hours and the weekends. I have very many happy memories of going to youth clubs in the 1980s, and I know that youth provision is essential. It channels energies, and provides support and opportunities to develop, and many hon. Members who have already spoken have gone into detail on that. I sympathise with those who highlight funding pressures, or even call for youth provision funding to be made statutory. However, I think that far more can be done without money, services and facilities, and so in my brief speech I shall touch on some positive suggestions based on my experience as a councillor and my work with the youth service.
Local authorities should do a lot more with their buildings. I recently secured a Westminster Hall debate on the future provision for libraries, and I think that councils could do a lot more to open up community buildings such as libraries to organisations for the provision of facilities. It does not cost much to put shelves on wheels and to push them to the side in the evenings. It is a great crime that we have many facilities that are open for only 10 hours for their primary function, with the community being locked out for the remainder of the week. More should be done also with schools. I was interested to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) about her experience in the ’80s. Today, we have huge swathes of private finance initiative schools, but the communities that I represent cannot afford to access those wonderful facilities and, therefore, far more should be done to open up the schools.
Our leisure facilities—sports facilities predominantly—should do a lot more with the youth service. The Twilight Football schemes target children from challenging circumstances and promote positive engagement, and that makes a big difference. Also, where there is funding to build new facilities, those facilities should be accessible. I have seen many facilities that in hindsight were built in the wrong place, and I am delighted that the new £1.2 million youth facility in my constituency was built in the town centre, which is easily the most accessible place.
Many hon. Members have also talked about the big society, and Labour Members often try to produce scare stories about that being a way to cover for potential funding cuts. The reality is, however, that it is about empowering local organisations, and the Government and local authorities can do more to support them.
Mr David
I am president of the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services and all the voluntary organisations involved are extremely keen to play a bigger role in the big society—there is no question about that. However, they all say to me, “We cannot do that if our grant aid from the public sector is being cut dramatically.” Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the things that he is talking about are almost incidental to the major cuts that will affect the voluntary sector over the next couple of years?
Justin Tomlinson
I was speaking at the Voluntary Action Swindon annual general meeting on Friday, and I got similar messages there. We cannot hide away from the current economic challenges, and I am trying to set out some areas in which we can make a positive difference. The shadow Minister will confirm whether it is the Labour party position to find some money—good luck if it can—and the Minister will set out the Government’s position. We cannot ignore the situation that we are in.
I have talked about making more of our buildings accessible. Many organisations have said to me, “We’ve got willing volunteers and enthusiasm. We can see a problem and we want to tackle it, but we don’t have access to facilities.” Whether as Government, local authorities or local businesses, we could do far more to provide those facilities, along with advice and support. One challenge in getting funding is the need to fill in extremely complicated forms. When I set up the sports forum in Swindon, a lot of effort was put into filling in forms. Volunteers are keen to make a difference on the front line, but not to lock themselves away in offices for many hours with complicated forms.
The youth service also needs to be a lot more proactive in matching with the times at which children or young people actually want to use its services. I am delighted that many authorities have changed their hours to match when children are outside school, and they should also go to where the children are. Too often, I have visited youth centres where a service is being provided to just a handful of children. In my constituency, we have an ice-skating disco on a Friday night. There are 650 children there, and the youth service should be parked outside providing help and support to those children who require it. Not every town has an ice-skating disco, but the same principle would apply to a cinema or bowling, or to teenage nightclubs, which I am assured are still very popular. In communities where there are open spaces, the leisure or youth teams could turn up with footballs and bibs, or rounders equipment, and organise impromptu games. I am sure that all hon. Members see when out in their constituencies that there are lots of kids hanging around, and they feel that someone should go along and positively engage with them.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
On the point about reaching out to small groups and how it would be better to reach out to larger ones, some of the hardest-to-reach young people in some of the most difficult-to-reach communities need youth work outreach and support on a very small scale. I have seen youth workers in some of the most difficult parts of my constituency just hanging out with children on the streets of an evening, so that the children at least engage in positive dialogue while they hang out. That is the kind of youth outreach work that is in danger when we focus on big projects and on the big national citizen service, rather than on smaller initiatives directed at particular groups of young people.
Justin Tomlinson
I am not sure that I agree. My point was about going to the young people, but the hon. Lady has made a good point. Engaging with certain children is very challenging, and the youth service must be as proactive as possible. If that means that it parks itself right in the heart of communities and engages directly, that is only a good thing. The service can also be there through the leisure facilities—teenage discos for example—so I sort of agree with the hon. Lady.
Finally, the principle of the National Union of Students discount card, which applies to students, should be extended. A lot more could be done to get young people discounts so that they can make more of the leisure facilities that are accessible to them. As a consumer body, young people are huge in number. By being proactive, we can make those facilities more accessible, to tackle the problems of boredom.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing this important debate. There is no doubt that all hon. Members in this Chamber are concerned about the personal development of Britain’s young people and how best to secure that. As somebody with a background in the voluntary youth sector as well as local government, I recognise well the concerns expressed by many hon. Members today.
I want to make three points. First, the message that came through strongly in my hon. Friend’s speech is that early intervention is valuable. The benefits to society from working with young people accrue much later on, but that does not mean that we should not recognise them early on. It is about understanding the best way of intervening. One of the challenges—one thing that we Opposition Members see in some of the things the Government are doing—is that the ability to be flexible and work with young people in a range of different ways seems to be narrowing rather than broadening.
It is about not just spaces and places for young people, but the people who work with them and the purpose of that work. We need both generalist activities that help and support young people, many of which come from the voluntary youth sector, and specialist services. I have worked in setting up both kinds of activities in my local community in Walthamstow—working with young people at risk of joining gangs, and with young people to help them achieve their potential in a broader sense. I am concerned about the idea that the national citizen service can be mixed with those more integrated services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
indicated dissent.
Stella Creasy
I am glad to see the Minister shaking his head. Those two things cannot be comparable. We in the youth sector know that they are apples and pears. The national citizen service, which is interesting, should in no way be regarded as a compensation for the ability to integrate services and work with young people in their communities in the long term. In areas such as Walthamstow, it is important for people on the ground to build up trusting relationships over time with young people to help them make the right choices in their life. It is critical that we understand the need to intervene differently in respect of various age groups and children in differing circumstances. Youth services in local areas have been able to develop ways of working around young people, rather than around the service that is delivered. I accept that that differs in various places. There are issues about how youth services are delivered, but we Opposition Members are concerned that the cuts that are coming through now will hamper youth services’ ability to be more flexible in working with young people in different ways and producing the interventions that people need to get the outcomes we all want.
Secondly, the consequences of the public sector cuts, nationally and locally, are already clear. I urge the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) to look again at the impact of the cuts on the national and local youth sector, particularly the voluntary youth sector. We recognise the interconnectedness of the voluntary youth sector and local youth services; that is the challenge for us. The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services has said that already this year youth sector organisations have lost 20% of their budget, and that 80% of the programmes that are closing are those working with people who are not in education, employment or training—the very group we are especially concerned about. That is already happening as a result of the in-year cuts.
There is understanding about the relationship between the voluntary youth sector and youth services locally, and other public services. It is important to put on the record the great support that the police and health care services in my area provide to youth projects. However, before we can get to the great world in which the voluntary youth sector is more involved in running services, we will see it being cut off at the start, so that it will be unable to do some of the more innovate partnership work we all want to see happen.
I shall make my third and final point brief because I recognise that we are short of time. The challenge we are facing is not difficult economic circumstances but the question, “What are our priorities?” If our priority is to get best value for money, it is clear from the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West that investment in voluntary youth services and youth services locally reaps dividends well beyond the initial financial investment.
What is the best way to tap into the ability and interest in volunteering with young people locally, and how best to support it? I welcome some of the ideas the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) has come up with, but he did not say how he would get the youth services bus to the youth disco, or who would pay for the person who organises and manages that. That is our critique. The hon. Gentleman’s ideas are fantastic, but how will he make them happen? Delivery and implementation—
Justin Tomlinson
There is still funding, although all hon. Members accept that that there are challenges in that regard. My point is that people should make the best use of their resources. I would expect that to be a priority in respect of organisations’ funding.
Stella Creasy
No one doubts the need to make the best use of resources, but cutting resources year in, year out with no alternative and asking the voluntary sector to pick up the slack does not add up. For example, it is explicit in the tender document for the national citizen service that the Government are already saying, “We will not fund this properly. We’re expecting the voluntary sector to pay for it.” Many voluntary sector organisations that might work with youth services in future to provide the more creative services that the hon. Gentleman was talking about are dependent on public sector funding, so they will be unable to do the work he wants to happen, let alone to provide services not just for 16-year-olds for three weeks over the summer, but for every age group at the point at which they need intervention.
I plead with all hon. Members to give the Minister the evidence and encouragement he needs to return to his colleagues and fight for the funding that youth services so desperately need to deliver services that we all want for young people in our communities. I am looking forward to welcoming the Minister to Walthamstow tomorrow, so that we can have a conversation about how he can fight for the funding he needs to deliver the services that all hon. Members in this Chamber want to see delivered.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I am grateful for the opportunity to say just a few words in this important debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) for securing it.
I am ashamed to admit that I have been involved in the youth service for nearly 40 years, since I was a teenager, particularly in detached youth work, which is, for me, one of the most important areas of youth work in urban Britain and many other places, too. I want to say a few words and join other hon. Members in pleading for the Government to ensure that they understand the importance of Government and local authority support for the youth service.
I have always believed that there ought to be a statutory youth service. That is my party’s policy, it is still my belief, and I hope that before long that can be the position. It has always been a Cinderella service, although it is the bit of support for young people that is needed to complement parental and family support, and school and educational support. Other role models who are not authority figures can often be far more influential in ensuring that young people have the development, security and safety they need.
I welcome the Education Committee’s inquiry. The Government are looking forward to introducing comprehensive proposals in the new year. I welcome that. The Minister has often been well received since taking on his job. I thank him for that. I am keen for him to be bold and ambitious, both in his Department and across Government, because this is not only the responsibility of the Department for Education.
The national citizen service is a good idea, but as colleagues have said it is a time-limited, specific activity for some people at some time. It will grow slowly. The reality of the youth service is that it can be found by and is accessible to everybody in every community. That is the difference. The youth service is there now. We have to ensure that we do not lose any of its validity or accessibility.
May I make a special plea to ensure that the funding for people to be qualified and trained as youth workers is increased, not decreased? Some of the best, most talented people, who may not have a great academic background, come through the youth service as volunteers, then realise that it is their vocation. They have just the sort of skills that are needed. Often, they are women or people from black and minority ethnic communities. They are really good role models who have been where the youngsters are now. They understand the score, because they have been in the front line and have come through. We need to ensure that they are given the educational support to go on and do practice-based qualifications.
I have said that my engagement has mainly been with detached youth work, but that is not to underestimate club-based or specialist youth work. The benefit that the hon. Member for Bolton West mentioned in being out on the street, engaging with youngsters where they are, not expecting them to come to where the service is, is fundamentally important. If people are to gain the confidence of young people, they do not say, “Come and do it my way”; they say, “We’re going to come alongside you and understand what you want.”
We know that local government will have a hard time, as will central Government, because the settlement is difficult. But local government does not have to find all its savings by cutting grants to the voluntary sector and does not have to cut equally across the board. I plead with every council, no matter who runs it, to make sure that they do not think that the implication of a severe spending cut means cutting the voluntary sector rather than reducing the in-house services. Often, the latter needs to be done, because money for the voluntary sector can multiply in terms of its benefits in the community.
Simon Hughes
I will not because I am conscious that other hon. Members want to speak.
I am keen to ensure that evening and weekend work is supported. One of the problems with a lot of traditional youth services is that they were there—fantastically—on Monday to Thursday evenings, but not on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. That is exactly when young people need places to go to.
A good example of a youth service was a place I went to in south Wales a few years ago. The kids wanted somewhere to hang around safely. They were given support locally in the valleys and they were able to build a shelter. It was a very simple shelter, but they built it and it was their place. It was a sort of glorified bus shelter, but it meant they had somewhere they could go, supported by individuals. Often, simple things that cost small amounts of money can transform people’s self worth and allow them to have a place they can call their own and build on.
Lastly, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) pointed out that there are often many unused buildings. In difficult financial circumstances there is an imperative for organisations to work together complementarily, to ensure that facilities are shared and that people do not just do their own thing. That is often a danger in the statutory youth sector if there are schools that do not stay open after school hours or youth clubs that open only in the evenings. Local authorities need to lead on that, and my plea is for the Minister to say to every council, “You lead with the voluntary and faith groups. Do the work on the ground.”
The Minister must also ensure that we have funding for youth workers whom we need to do their job, and that we do not lose them; we need them now more than ever. We must not lose key services, which are often the glue that keeps communities together as well as keeping young people and their communities safe.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on her excellent speech. She is clearly not just an expert but passionate about her working life before Parliament, and she probably knows more than anybody in the House about the youth service. I hope the Government will listen to her.
Luton North is an unusual constituency. When I was elected in 1997 it had the highest proportion of children aged under five in the whole country. In more recent years, it had the highest proportion of school-age children in the country, and those are now young people. There has been a surge of young people, and although Luton has wonderful educational and youth facilities, we have a considerable number of young people who are disaffected and perhaps not so successful in education, and they need much more support. We had a large number of people not in education, employment or training, and until recently, we did not quite know what was happening to them every year.
A number of community centres were built by Labour councils in the past. When I was a councillor in the 1970s, we built superb facilities that are still in operation today. However, facilities alone are not enough. We need staff to operate them. Some of that staffing is now being squeezed, and some of the services in those centres for young people are being trimmed at the edges, despite the fact that we have an excellent Labour council that is doing its best. There are problems now, and unless something is done it will get much worse once the serious cuts come through. To pretend that youth services do not need to be cut and that we can squeeze somewhere else is playing with words. The cuts will affect every service one way or another. The youth service has been underfunded in the past and it does not need less funding; it needs much more.
[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]
One factor is safety, which my hon. Friend mentioned. Young people are on the streets. It is not just those in gangs, but those not in gangs who do not feel safe. They need places to go and professional staff to organise activities in which they can participate. In a letter that I received this morning, Tracey Quinn, the integrated youth support team manager for Luton North and a senior youth worker, wrote,
“we are proud of the good youth work we do with young people in the north of Luton and any future cuts to this young people’s service will be detrimental to both youth work and young people as part of the North Luton community.”
There is serious concern at local level in Luton. I worked for Unison for many years as a researcher. It has said that Connexions will face cuts of up to 50% across the country. That has serious implications, especially for NEETs.
I must take issue with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). He was talking about a national youth service and implying that the Government should take a central role in that. However, when asked to justify current cuts to youth services at a recent meeting with young people, he told them that the decision was not for central Government, but for local councils. That is saying, “We’ll cut your money, but you’ll get the blame.” We cannot blame local authorities when they are facing savage cuts.
My major point is that I do not accept the need for cuts. I have raised that point in the Commons and, before anybody intervenes, I also raised it with Ministers in the last Government before the election. We should be targeting employment creation to bring down unemployment. That will increase tax revenues and reduce the need for benefit payments. The by-product of that will be a reduction in the deficit.
Some countries have gone for savage cuts. I feel deeply sorry for the Irish; they have gone for savage cuts, but that makes their economy perform less well. Setting aside their massive debts, they have seen output decline, and going for deeper cuts will make the problem even worse. The developed world should be reflating not deflating, but we are moving towards deflation. Cutting expenditure on youth facilities will make the situation worse. Employment generation should be used in that area to bring down levels of unemployment and start to reduce the deficit. I could go on at greater length but I have probably said enough. I will listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Weir. [Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Rosindell, you don’t even look like Mr Weir.
This has been an excellent and thought-provoking debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate and on her contribution, and I will reflect on some of the other contributions.
One point that my hon. Friend made particularly powerfully was about the value that youth work provides in generating money into our communities. The fact that for every £1 spent on youth services, another £8 of voluntary activity is generated is a powerful statistic. She also reflected on the national citizen service, and whether it should be seen as an alternative to youth service provision. The general mood of the debate was that it should not.
I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments to the question raised by my hon. Friend during Education questions:
“As youth services nationally have already been cut by 30 to 40%...how will the Secretary of State ensure the quality of youth service provision in future?”
The Minister responded:
“The hon. Lady underlines the great importance of engaging the young people of this country as proper citizens, which is why we are carrying forward the national citizen service programme,”—[Official Report, 15 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 643-4.]
To an impartial observer, that sounds rather as if the national citizen service was the replacement for youth services.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) said that cuts to the youth service are a false economy. That is a powerful and central point that we should all reflect on. Making such cuts to youth services will lead to additional costs in policing, social work, education, health services and fighting crime in our communities. If we do not get it right, we will be paying for the cuts to the youth service time and time again.
Justin Tomlinson
Will the hon. Gentleman confirm exactly what level of funding the Labour party would provide and how they would pay for it?
Toby Perkins
I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution in more detail. We had a Budget in 2010, and people could see from the direction of travel taken by the Labour Government over previous years just how much of a priority we placed on youth services. The improvement in youth services is clear as a result of that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West also said that she did not want us to return to the bleak days of the 1980s. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) talked about the big society as a political convenience. She is in good company because the Minister himself is completely unclear about what the big society means. He says:
“The trouble is that most people don’t know what the Big Society really means, least of all the unfortunate ministers who have to articulate it.”
We look forward to him attempting to do that in a moment. He says:
“What actually is the Big Society, let alone is it good or not? Exactly how big is it now or is it going to be?”
I can answer that question: it is getting smaller by the moment. However, I look forward to him perhaps attempting to articulate better in the future than he has been able to in the past what the big society is and what the contribution of youth services should be to the big society.
The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) made a thoughtful contribution, which started well when she said that prevention was better than cure. She focused on how important it was for us to take serious action on NEETs. She may be aware of the piece in The Times Educational Supplement with the sub-heading “Experts predict rise in Neets as young people are left without support following local authority raids”. It stated:
“Local authorities are slashing Connexions budgets”
and youth services,
“raising fears that young people out of work or education will be left without support.”
In raising the initial question, the hon. Lady was on exactly the right lines. It is just a shame that she did not follow that through, but decided instead to divert us to the line we heard a number of times that the issue is the quality of the service, rather than the money. It is deeply disingenuous for us as politicians and for those in government to talk about the level of cuts that local authorities will see and say that they must not cut safeguarding—the Minister has already told them that, and the Prime Minister said that they should not cut the voluntary sector—but that it is totally up to local authorities what decisions they make. Some responsibility must be taken at central Government level. If cuts of 27% in local authority funding are to be made, youth services in particular will be affected, but services will be affected across the board. We cannot keep saying to local authorities, “Well, it’s your decision what you choose to cut.” The Government have to take some responsibility for that.
The hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) had obviously given youth services considerable thought and he reflected positively on his experiences as a councillor and the importance of youth services in that area, but he repeated the idea that the cut in funding should not necessarily lead to a cut in services. That is the elephant in the room that we need to be honest about. If youth service professionals are to take us seriously in this debate, we need to be honest about the fact that they will see very substantial cuts. I think that 95% of local authority youth services say that their budgets for providing services to young people in their area are being cut. That will make a real difference to the level of service provided.
The hon. Gentleman had some good ideas about how school and council buildings could be used more effectively, but we must be realistic. The big cost for youth services is actually for the people employed within them, so yes, we can use buildings more effectively, but there is still a cost attached. We ought to be realistic about the cost attached to improving those services. The hon. Gentleman’s ideas about taking people on trips and so on all have a cost attached to them.
Justin Tomlinson
Just to clarify, opening up those facilities was as much for external organisations, whether those are scout groups, dance groups, sports clubs or whatever.
Toby Perkins
Okay. Certainly the voluntary sector will play a very important role. As someone who has been involved in youth sport coaching for the last six or seven years, I know how important the role of the voluntary sector and sports organisations is and completely support that. That is why I have been so horrified by the cuts that the same Minister has been making to the school sports partnership. That was a very important way of engaging children in sport, which led to their involvement in sports clubs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) reflected on the interconnectivity of all these services. That is a central point that we need to consider. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) reflected on a lifetime dedicated to youth work and youth services and made a thoughtful contribution. When he reflected on the success of youth services in their contribution to the education of people who then go on to develop themselves further and become mature students, he made a very powerful point. He also reflected on the importance of street engagement in terms of youth services. That is another of the central areas in which the national citizen service will be no replacement for youth services, because the national citizen service is a universal service and the activity that it involves will take place over a very short period of a young person’s life, whereas youth services are there every single day of the year, providing a service, particularly to people from more deprived communities, out on the streets. It is a service that they have to engage with; they have to make that contribution.
When the hon. Gentleman said that councils do not have to cut the voluntary sector, he was repeating the line that we have been hearing, which does not take into account the serious level of cuts that there will be for local authorities. Inevitably, when so much of local authorities’ money is already tied up in contracts with external providers, the cost of redundancies and so on, the voluntary sector is an easy area for them to cut. The reality that we all recognise, and that the voluntary sector is very worried about, is the amount of cuts that there will be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) focused on the fact that the cuts will not spare youth services. I put it to him that in fact the cuts will specifically focus more on an area such as youth services than on some of the statutory areas, such as safeguarding, which councils will be very sensitive about cutting.
I think that all of us, right across the House, would support the general ethos of a big society and the general principle behind it. The Minister is right to say that it still defies an exact description, but we all have an idea of what we think it ought to mean.
The lack of co-ordination between different organisations has implications for how we keep our children safe. Safeguarding is an area that many councils will be protecting, but safeguarding often applies after the problem has been identified. Youth workers play a central role in identifying children who are at risk and in making referrals. There are many cross-referrals from youth services, police services and adult social services to child social services. If those services are diminished, the number of referrals will reduce and many children will never be identified as having problems.
I would like the Minister to respond to the question about whether he agrees that youth services are an integral part of our education system. Does he still see a central role for youth services in our education system? Does he accept that local authority funding is the glue that holds a wide range of youth services together? We currently spend about £100 per year per young person. How much does the Minister think that we will spend in 2011-12? Does he see youth work as a professional role? Does he recognise the professional qualifications that youth workers have now and how important they are?
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the majority of youths in an area have no interaction whatever with youth services, and that within areas there is often tension between a number of voluntary organisations and the local authority? It would be much better if the local authorities worked much more closely with the youths and if the local voluntary organisations provided the activities and services that those young people wanted.
Toby Perkins
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case for expanding funding for youth services. I would certainly support him in that campaign, but at this time we are trying to protect what we have. The key point is that youth services work across our communities, but they work most closely with those in the most deprived areas, those most likely to drop out of school and those most likely to get involved in crime. The central role played by youth services in this country and their success has been recognised by people across the world.
Finally, the Minister must set at rest the minds of people involved in youth work and say that he values their work. If he does value it, he should say what he will do to ensure that the excellent youth services that are provided in this country are protected.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Rosindell. This is the worst kind of debate to which to respond. I have been left with 11 minutes to take on board the excellent contributions of seven Back Benchers in this worthwhile and informed debate. It has not been quite as well attended as the debate on high-speed rail, but this matter is of great importance to everybody who is present and to people in our constituencies.
I will discard most of my speech and respond to the points that have been raised by hon. Members. At the end, I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). She provided some questions to the Department at 21 minutes past midnight last night. Unfortunately, I was not at my desk and have not had time to go into them in detail. [Interruption.] I was at my desk at 21 minutes past 11 last night, but not at 21 minutes past 12. I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with more detail and to have a meeting with her to take up the more substantive issues.
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate and recognise her great experience in this area as a former youth worker, a former president of the Community and Youth Workers Union and a committed campaigner for young people. I believe that services for young people are vital. I have had the pleasure of visiting the fantastic Bolton Lads and Girls Club, which has been mentioned no fewer than three times. The Prime Minister has been there at least twice and the Prime Minister’s wife has visited it. It is in the constituency neighbouring the hon. Lady’s. Recently, I was delighted to join a group of business leaders in Blackburn who are working with the founders of that club to establish a series of similar facilities across the north-west of England, which is tremendously exciting. The commitment shown to young people by the OnSide project and by local people and businesses in Bolton is second to none, so the hon. Lady can speak from great experience.
I will set out briefly the principles of the Government’s approach to youth services before responding to specific questions. We want to promote a culture of being positive about young people in this country, which engages with the media, central and local government and people of all generations. Intergenerational trust has taken a knock in recent years, and has been exacerbated by negative stories about young people and mixed messages from the previous Government. The good projects supported by the previous Government sat uneasily with the negative messages given by the respect agenda, antisocial behaviour orders, curfew orders and the proliferation of those ghastly Mosquito devices.
We want to promote the involvement of young people in decision making at the top table on matters that affect them, not just on specific youth budget issues. That is not tokenism. As money is tight, we are freeing local authorities to decide what money should be spent on in the light of local priorities. We have ended ring-fencing to give greater autonomy to local authorities. We want to introduce an early intervention grant to help disadvantaged young people get on track for success, using proven effective practices. That is the best use of public funds. The hon. Lady rightly catalogued the cost of failure in this area.
Yesterday, I visited Nottingham, the early intervention city, to see a series of projects that are being led by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), who I am delighted to say is undertaking an early intervention review for the Government. That is where the hon. Lady has her roots as a youth worker. As many hon. Members have said, early intervention is key. It is important not just in the early years, but in identifying teenagers who are at risk of indulging in dangerous behaviour, before they get on a slippery slope.
We also want to promote new partnerships and sources of finance with the private sector and voluntary bodies. We want to enable voluntary bodies to challenge the monopoly provision of youth services departments. The big society bank is a particularly interesting way in which huge amounts of money might be leveraged into innovative and exciting youth projects.
I have talked to a huge number of people who are passionate about achieving excellent services for young people and I will be talking to young people, youth services representatives, businesses and the media over the coming months to develop our thinking. I have set up a youth forum of key players in the youth sector, which will meet again in two weeks. That is an important source of information, as are the various panels of young people that I have set up to inform the Government about how best to shape policy.
Young people contribute a massive amount to their communities, but the press they get is out of keeping with that and unduly negative. Antisocial behaviour must be tackled firmly, but one of my first responsibilities is to celebrate young people’s achievements, and to promote a culture in the country and in the media of doing so. I am sure that all hon. Members present will want to contribute to that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) made the strong point that prevention is better than waiting for the cure, hence our emphasis on early intervention through the early intervention grant. How that money is spent is important. We should not just throw money at projects. Their success should be determined not by the number of participants, but by whether they provide a life-changing experience for the young person, by the value added and by the quality of the experience. There has been too much concentration on how many people have participated, regardless of the outcomes.
My hon. Friend rightly said that the big society is not a political convenience, but something that has been going on in parts of the country beneath the radar for many years. We want to raise it on to the radar and to encourage more people to participate in it. The Opposition spokesman fell into the trap of lazy journalists. Occasionally, it is useful to let detail get in the way of a good headline. If he reads my speech at the Edith Kahn memorial lecture, he will see that the 17 pages subsequent to the initial setting out of the problems are rather good and set out what the big society is all about. I recommend that he reads it in full; it is available on the Department for Education website. It sounds as though Mike Stephens is something of a one-man big society in his own right.
The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) went on about the bleak days of the 1980s. She clearly got her headline because she has now legged it elsewhere. She mentioned Armley Juniors, which has set up a youth facility in a local post office—one of the few things to come from the previous Government’s wholesale closure of the post office network.
The Government’s policy is not about cuts, but about new and smarter ways of doing things. Just yesterday, we launched the voluntary and community sector grant scheme, which encourages youth services organisations to come forward with their good ideas to get funding from the Department for Education. There is a new £110 million education endowment fund that will allow schools, charities, local authorities, academy sponsors and other groups to bid for funding to boost the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. There is about £470 million to help fund key programmes, including the training of community organisers, the creation of a new neighbourhood grant programme and so on. We should look beyond the headlines.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) is right that we should use existing facilities in a smarter way. We want to use children’s centres more out of hours and at weekends for youth activities. We should make more use of schools and sports facilities that are lying idle for much of the time. In my constituency, I set up a midnight football project that runs from 10 o’clock to midnight on Saturdays at a leisure centre after it has closed. That is when it is not being used and when the problems happen.
I will come on to the points made by the hon. Member for Bolton West, but because I have so little time I think that we will have to have a meeting. She asked about collecting information on youth services and auditing them. The Government collect annual figures on local authority expenditure on youth work through what have become known as section 52 returns. We are reviewing all data requirements on local authorities, but we have no plans to discontinue the collection of that information. I hope that that answer is helpful.
It is important that youth services are scrutinised by local young people. Youth mayors—there is one in Worthing—youth cabinets and UK Youth Parliament members should scrutinise the quality of youth services. They should use their voice to challenge local authorities and the Government. I spend a lot of time with them.
The hon. Lady mentioned West Sussex and I am aware of the pressures on local authority budgets. In fact, West Sussex county council has changed the way in which it does things and the cuts will not be of the level that she mentioned.
I look forward to visiting the project tomorrow with the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). The national citizen service is not compensation for youth services. The funding will not come out of the Department for Education’s funding for youth services, but will be completely separate. However, it does bring lessons for new ways of doing things that can be applied to the youth sector—it is about inspiring young people. We are not discussing just a short summer camp, but an experience of a lifetime at the transition to adulthood that will engage and re-engage young people in their communities on an ongoing and lasting basis. Let us not confuse it with a glorified summer camp.
There are many more questions, but I am running out of time in which to answer them. I would be delighted to meet the hon. Member for Bolton West.
Heritage Sites (Halesowen)
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James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for the first time today, Mr Rosindell.
At first glance, the debate seems specific to my constituency of Halesowen and Rowley Regis. However, potentially wider implications regarding the role of English Heritage should become clear and might well require further investigation.
People in Halesowen are proud of their cultural heritage and are concerned about one particular site of historic interest, which I want to talk about in some detail, as it illustrates some of the wider points that I want to make in the debate.
Halesowen abbey has been an intrinsic part of the heritage of Halesowen since it was founded nearly 800 years ago, in 1215. It was used as a monastery until the 16th century, when it was closed down by Henry VIII. The site was later granted to Sir John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, before being sold to the Lyttleton family in 1558. It later descended to Lord Cobham, who sold it to the current owner in 1993. A number of impressive tiles from the abbey are now held in the British Museum. The County Express, on Saturday 3 August 1938, reported a major archaeological find at the site. Many local people and the Halesowen Abbey Trust, which has been influential in looking after the site, are convinced that there are other archaeological deposits on the site of major historical significance.
The abbey is, under law, a scheduled ancient monument of national importance, which comes with certain implications that I will touch on later. The abbey was first classified with such significance in the early 20th century. Since 1950 it has also been a grade I listed building due to its special architectural and historic interest. The abbey is, evidently, not just another old building, but rather a demonstrably iconic piece in the Halesowen historical jigsaw.
Concern has been expressed on decisions about the site over a long period of time. Since 1993 many local people and groups have expressed concern that changes at the site have run roughshod over planning law and local opinion in Halesowen, even choosing to ignore and contradict the stipulations laid down by the Secretary of State in 1995, when giving scheduled monument consent. At that time, rather than knocking down an outbuilding, as approved by the Secretary of State, an extension was built on to an existing building.
I have no personal animus towards the current owner of the site, but several retrospective planning permissions have been applied for on multiple occasions, and the local group the Halesowen Abbey Trust argues that lasting damage has been caused, for example through repeated unauthorised tipping, to this site of national significance. As a consequence, there has been a substantial drop in the number of visitors to the site, from around 1,800 visitors in one weekend alone in 1989 to the temporary ending of public access in 2001. Furthermore, in spite of poor upkeep, when the site was opened for a three-day period earlier this year, more than 500 people visited, illustrating the importance of the site to local people and those from the surrounding area.
English Heritage itself has, on a number of occasions, observed the poor condition of the site, reporting
“broken glass, barbed wire, bricks, pieces of steel piping, fallen roof tiles and beer barrels”
among the reasons for a failure to open the site and as a general comment on its deterioration. English Heritage has also accepted that the unauthorised works that went on might have damaged buried archaeological artefacts.
As I said, I do not hold any personal animus towards the current owner, and it is up to the development control committee of the local authority to determine whether the current owner has the best intentions of Halesowen at heart when it considers his planning application. It will be for the committee to decide whether the conversion of a number of abbey outbuildings and barns into residential properties offers any improvement to the site—I understand that, last night, the most recent application for the barn conversion was accepted and passed by the development control committee.
As a result, it is absolutely imperative that English Heritage plays a proactive role in the future of the site, and that it answers some important questions about its role in the future preservation and development of this important historical site. What monitoring and level of active interest will English Heritage now exercise as a consequence of the decision? Will it oversee necessary archaeological work? Will it conduct impromptu site visits, to ensure that access is properly available? Will we be able to see a report of what was found during the development? What level of public visiting does English Heritage envisage in the future?
There are significant question marks over the role of English Heritage in the whole saga. Supposedly, its role is regularly to monitor scheduled monuments such as Halesowen abbey and to ensure that they are conserved or enhanced if conservation work is undertaken. However, I would question the ability of English Heritage properly and regularly to monitor the sites put into its care and its efforts to act upon any unauthorised material changes to historical sites such as Halesowen abbey.
At this point, Mr Rosindell, I should make you aware that Stonehenge has the same statutory protection as Halesowen abbey. Therefore, the role of English Heritage at Halesowen abbey, upon which I will expand, has potential implications for the heritage of ancient sites across the UK.
English Heritage has had unrivalled access to Halesowen abbey, through its statutory rights under law. In spite of that, it took a third party, the Halesowen Abbey Trust, to notice and report unauthorised works by the current owner. Indeed, the trust noticed that the works were of
“sufficient magnitude for them to be clearly visible from a considerable distance outside of the scheduled area, with the naked eye”.
The Halesowen Abbey Trust also helpfully informed me that English Heritage offices are based in Colmore row, Birmingham, which is just a 20-minute bus journey away from the site in Halesowen. Such material facts call into question the ability of English Heritage, in its current guise, effectively to operate and protect our national heritage, and illustrate an apparent lack of commitment and will to protect this particular site.
When the first instance of unauthorised work at the site occurred in 1996, English Heritage and the local council chose not to use the legal and practical means at their disposal to seek any meaningful move to restoring the site to its state before the unauthorised work. The local authority decision was made in a particular context, which involved an attempt to take the site forward in co-operation with the new owners. At the time, a number of assurances were made in good faith that there would be no repetition of such unauthorised works. As the Minister will understand, the Halesowen Abbey Trust was somewhat surprised in 2005 when English Heritage took the same position on further unauthorised work.
As far back as 1996, English Heritage wrote to the local press explaining that it had been unable to uphold its statutory functions because it lacked the necessary resources. If English Heritage is saying now that it has neither sufficient resources to protect our heritage from unauthorised works, nor the will to take appropriate action against those undertaking such works, there are some serious questions about its role and validity in this case. Although English Heritage survived the recent review of quangos by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, there is an argument for saying that that might, in some respects, have been slightly fortuitous.
English Heritage has made a number of decisions about the abbey that could be construed, at best, as very surprising and, at worst, as bizarre and lacking any credibility, and I want to give one illustration. The current owner built an unauthorised 2.3 metre high wall on the site, citing the need for a flood barrier. When the retrospective planning application was put before English Heritage and the Environment Agency in October 2002, it was noted that the constructed wall would
“not provide any flood defence to the buildings”,
and both bodies advised that the planning application should be refused. Yet just months later, in August 2003, both organisations decided to approve a retrospective planning application on the basis that the wall would be reduced from 2.3 to 1.5 metres. That change would not of course make any material difference to the flooding issue that was originally cited. However, the creation of the wall leaves the monument and its setting damaged in perpetuity.
Halesowen abbey is not the only heritage site that is being poorly maintained in my constituency. The Ice house, which was built in the late 18th century and which is located in close proximity to Halesowen abbey, was given grade II listed building status last year. However, it has been vandalised on a number of occasions, and little has been done to protect and maintain it. Although Halesowen has a long history of heritage, there are few sites, and residents in Halesowen and the surrounding area are rightly concerned and angry about the deterioration of a number of them and want action to be taken. Constituents have written to me, and others have spoken to me directly, to express their unhappiness. I am therefore grateful that the Minister is here to address some of my points, and I have some specific questions for him.
What ability and competence does English Heritage have in terms of upholding laws and regulations relating to ancient and historical monuments such as Halesowen abbey and surrounding sites? Would a significant change to an historic site, such as the conversion of nearby outbuildings to residential use, represent a material deterioration, conservation or an enhancement to such a site? Would the Minister support a decision by English Heritage not to take action against the owner of an historic site for breaking the law on the basis that it wanted to avoid upsetting the owner? Will the Minister consider introducing an independent review of the current legislation on, and role of, regulatory bodies in respect of heritage sites of national significance?
The people of Halesowen want the proper preservation and enhancement of their sites of historical interest. They are concerned by the ongoing deterioration of such sites and by the apparent lack of will on the part of public agencies to preserve them. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend, and I thank him once again for being here to engage in this important debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)
Let me echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) by saying that this is my first opportunity to serve under you on one of these occasions, Mr Rosindell, and I am sure that it will be a pleasure. I saw you running the previous debate with military efficiency, so I am sure that we will make good progress in this one, too.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on gaining this debate and on setting out his case so clearly. He has made it clear to everybody here that Halesowen has elected a doughty champion for local people, who is willing to fight for local issues and to take them right the way to debates in the Houses of Parliament, when necessary. Heritage is not everybody’s cup of tea, but my hon. Friend has shown that he is willing to engage with issues right across the breadth of political discourse, and I congratulate him.
I will endeavour to respond to my hon. Friend’s points one by one in order, because he asked some quite specific questions. Before I begin that detailed response, however, I should say that if my hon. Friend hears anything in my response that, on further reflection and after discussion with local constituents, he wants to come back to me on, I am of course at his disposal. He can write to me, or we can have a conversation, if there are any points to follow up after the debate.
It might be helpful if I give a small amount of background about the site. My hon. Friend rightly said that it is quite a complicated site. On frequent occasions, it has been quite messy, and all sorts of different layers of usage have built up during its long history. Most recently, it has been quite a hard-working agricultural area, so the site has been used as a farmyard and a working area for quite some time. He is therefore right that the site has been messy, but he will understand that although everyone would obviously like all parts of the country to be beautiful, gorgeous and well maintained, the important issue from the point of view of English Heritage and the Government is whether the heritage has been damaged for future generations and whether the public has access, albeit messy access. Those are the crucial points that he is driving at, and I shall try to confine my remarks to the thrust of his questions.
My hon. Friend asked some quite specific questions about the controls that English Heritage may or may not exercise with regard to the development process. As he said, the local authority, in its planning authority role, gave permission just yesterday for the proposed developments to go ahead. He is absolutely right that English Heritage will expect to maintain quite close scrutiny of the development process for a monument of this importance and seniority to make sure that it is not harmed and that the development goes as planned and does not depart from the original plans.
Where such developments take place, the requirements are very specific to each individual site, so I shall ask English Heritage to write my hon. Friend a letter detailing precisely how it plans to engage with the development process in this case. If I describe generalities, that might not necessarily do the trick for this specific site, which will have its own idiosyncrasies. However, if I ask English Heritage to write to my hon. Friend to lay out precisely how it plans to engage with this process, he will have something in black and white, and he will be able to check whether it is being done. Equally, constituents and the Halesowen Abbey Trust will know what to expect from English Heritage, so that they can make sure that the development process is being conducted sympathetically and in a controlled fashion. I am sure that my hon. Friend, his constituents and I would all agree that that will be essential over the coming weeks and months as the development process moves forward.
My hon. Friend asked whether the Government believe that a significant change to an historic site, such as the conversion of nearby outbuildings for residential use, represented a material deterioration, conservation or an enhancement to the site in question. That is a tremendously important question generally and in the specific case of this site. It is undoubtedly true that any change or development can constitute a risk to a site of heritage importance. However, it is also true that sympathetic development, when done correctly, can be the saving of an awful lot of such sites. In general, English Heritage, other heritage bodies up and down the country and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have found that it is far better to have a sympathetic site owner or manager, and a site that is in continuous use with a sustainable use going forward. That is simply because it then has a continuing purpose and is likely to be invested in as necessary, to ensure that the new and historical structures are well maintained.
James Morris
I totally understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, but in this case there has been a lot of evidence over a long time of a lack of confidence on the part of the local community and, in particular, the Halesowen Abbey Trust, in the will to make the necessary changes and ensure that, where there is controlled development, it is done in a way that is suitable for the site and preserves its potential archaeological interest.
John Penrose
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As I understand it, the plans that have just been approved were originally developed a couple of years ago, starting in 2008, in full consultation with English Heritage. It had extensive input into those plans and has indicated that it is comfortable with how the plans will treat the monument and the listed remains.
Of course, the question is not just whether the plans are sympathetically drawn up, and whether the intention is to use sensible materials that will frame the heritage parts of the site in an impressive and academically acceptable way, but whether those plans will genuinely be delivered, as the development process goes through. I take my hon. Friend’s point on that.
I shall come on to answer some of his questions about developments to the site that were made without planning permission and that needed retrospective planning permission. I hope that my answer to my hon. Friend’s question about controls over the development process and how English Heritage is planning to engage with those—and the fact that I am going to ask English Heritage to write to him with a list of how it is going to do that—will help to address both his concerns and those of local people. In the unlikely event that English Heritage does not live up to what it plans to do on that site during the development process, I am sure that he and the trust will be on its case and will contact me as necessary to ensure that there is no slippage or backsliding.
To pick up on the final point I was making in answer to the last question, it is better to have a living building that is being used in a sustainable fashion, provided that that is done sympathetically to the heritage asset concerned, than something that is unused and not cared for, that does not attract investment, and that is therefore unlikely to be maintained. That is something that we find across the country.
Last week I was lucky enough to visit some of the new developments taking place by King’s Cross station in north London, where a number of listed buildings are being incorporated into some stunning modern architecture. There is a wonderful juxtaposition of old and new; it is being done very carefully with a great deal of respect for the heritage assets. The future of those heritage assets will be hugely improved as a result of being brought back into use in a modern way. I hope that is a clear answer to my hon. Friend’s original question.
My hon. Friend asked whether the Government would support a decision by English Heritage not to prosecute the owner of an historic site for breaking the law, on the basis that it wanted to avoid upsetting the owner. He mentioned the case of the flood wall, but I understand that there have been other, smaller cases, too. I understand that English Heritage did consider prosecution and took the case to the Crown Prosecution Service, which indicated it would not be prepared to take forward the prosecution of Mr Tudor for the unauthorised works. That is not to say that it is never right to prosecute. In fact, English Heritage has prosecuted in the past, though not frequently because the cost is very high and, technically, achieving a positive result in court in these cases is hard. However, it has happened, and successfully. I do not think that there is any theoretical or practical obstacle to doing so, but it happens rarely.
Given that the CPS said it was reluctant to take the case forward because it felt that there was a low probability of success, I think English Heritage’s approach of saying that it needed to work constructively with the owner was probably the best opportunity in that specific option. That does not mean that it should not come down hard on examples of bad behaviour. On occasions, it is necessary, as the French said of the English Navy, to hang an admiral pour encourager les autres. It is important to make it clear that there is a line in the sand beyond which people should not go. The principle is clear and is as my hon. Friend describes.
My hon. Friend’s final question was whether we should introduce an independent review to check on the ability of English Heritage to uphold laws and regulations. I think that English Heritage is held in pretty high regard across the wider heritage community, if I can put it that way, although obviously no organisation is perfect. A lot of people, including within English Heritage, would say that they wanted it to improve in a number of ways. However, English Heritage, among others, also agrees that in the wake of the comprehensive spending review, like any other part of the public sector, it has to do more with less. At the moment it is busy re-organising in order to become more efficient and is cutting its cloth to fit, in the same way that everybody else has to. It is not pleasant or fun, but it has to make do, and is doing so professionally.
It is clear that, once the dust has settled, English Heritage will have to look at some of its current processes—for example, the listings process—to work out how to perform those statutory tasks in a way that is more efficient, faster and cheaper, while at the same time ensuring that it provides the important protection of heritage assets that my hon. Friend and I have been debating.
James Morris
Again, I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes. Will he emphasise to English Heritage the importance of sites in areas such as Halesowen? If one mentions Halesowen heritage outside of Halesowen, people do not realise the rich tapestry of culture and heritage that there is there and in other areas of the black country. English Heritage should prioritise and give thought to the importance of monuments in places that are not typically thought of as traditional areas of English heritage.
John Penrose
I am happy to do so. My hon. Friend has touched on an important point, because heritage assets are wrongly viewed as a crumbling piece of an awkward obstacle to development. In most communities, they are rightly seen as huge assets from which the community can benefit. They make each community distinct and different, and keep us in touch with our local past. In many cases they are great sources of tourism income, too. I agree completely that there are a lot of opportunities there.
To conclude, English Heritage knows that it has to react to the recent comprehensive spending review by becoming more efficient, in the same way as many other bodies in the public sector. It is starting that remodelling, and I expect it to go a great deal further over the next months. I hope it will do so in a way that will please my hon. Friend. In the meantime, I will ask it to write to him with the details of how it proposes to protect this site.
Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)
Order. The sitting is suspended until 1 o’clock.
Education Policies (Warrington North)
(14 years ago)
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Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure, Mr Rosindell, to serve under your chairmanship. It is a pleasure, also, to see the Minister in his place; he and I used to serve on the Select Committee for Education and I know that he has a genuine interest in education. I hope that he will take seriously what I am about to say.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss the impact that the Government’s education policies are having, and will continue to have, on my constituency. In truth, however, the Government’s decisions and their cuts to the education budget will seriously hamper the life chances of many young people in my constituency, especially the poorest.
The borough of Warrington does not rank high in the indices of deprivation. It contains some affluent areas, but it also contains areas of multiple deprivation. Many of the poorest wards in the borough are in my constituency—indeed, they are among the most deprived in Cheshire—and it is those areas that are now being hit.
The cuts began with the Government’s decision to cancel the Building Schools for the Future project. As a result, two schools in my constituency—William Beamont high school and Lysander high school—saw their hopes of new buildings disappear rapidly over the horizon.
We opened one new school in my constituency under the BSF project. It was Culcheth high school, and I went to the opening in the autumn. It is a fantastic building, and it will enhance the opportunity for teaching and learning in the area, as well as providing more facilities for the community. It is so good that Warrington’s cabinet executive member for education, Councillor Sheila Woodyatt, called it the best thing to happen to Culcheth in 100 years—and she is a Conservative. It is sad that some of the more deprived areas in my constituency will not have the same opportunities.
The BSF project was cancelled without properly assessing the need to rebuild in certain areas. Indeed, I asked the Department what assessment it had made of the need for rebuilding at a number of schools in my constituency, but it took a long time to answer. I asked the question in July; I received the answer on 26 October. The answer made it clear that no real assessment of need had been made before cancellation, yet BSF would have given us £80 million to rebuild Warrington’s schools. That sum would have enabled the rebuilding of William Beamont high school and modernised Lysander high school. Those schools serve some of the most deprived areas in the borough. They serve wards where many have low incomes, and where an increasing number of people are unemployed. Above all, they serve areas where many have no qualifications, yet those schools have done a fantastic job in increasing aspiration and improving educational outcomes.
William Beamont is a specialist sports college with a second specialism in IT. Lysander high school is another specialist school. William Beamont has increased the number of children getting five good GCSEs; it has cut its exclusion rate, and it has increased attendance. Lysander school has exceeded its targets for improving its GCSE results, and it has also exceeded the council’s targets. They did all those things in old and unsuitable buildings. I ask the Minister to imagine what could be done if they had decent, up-to-date facilities.
Facilities matter. Conservative members of Warrington borough council know that they matter. When the BSF project was announced, Councillor Woodyatt told the Warrington Guardian that she welcomed the difference that it would make not only to teachers and pupils but to the community. Her allies, the Liberal Democrats—Warrington, too, has a Conservative-Liberal coalition—trumpeted about the BSF money in their newsletter, saying that
“substantial sums of money have been secured to modernise our schools”.
They did not say then that it was not necessary, and they did not foresee any problems. They were glad of it. Now, however, those schools will have to bid again for money from a much-reduced capital spending pot.
The Government’s criteria in the Treasury’s Green Book for allocating that money are clear; they are population growth and modernisation. Deprivation is not mentioned anywhere. We know that population growth will lead to a bulge in primary school pupil numbers, which will necessitate the spending of more money. The Government also want to spend money on free schools and academies, thus depleting the pot even more. The Warrington schools will be bidding for money from a reduced pot, but experience shows that many of those that have already been given the go-ahead are receiving only 40% of what they expected. That is a huge slap in the face for the poorer communities in Warrington.
Helen Jones
I am sorry, but I have limited time and the hon. Gentleman did not seek my permission to participate in the debate.
The BSF cuts are not the only problem faced by Warrington schools. As I said, those two schools are specialist schools, yet specialist funding has been stopped. William Beamont is part of the school sports partnership, which hugely increased the number of young people taking part in sport in Warrington. That funding, too, is to be axed.
As for the overall settlement, we foresee further problems. The Government are keen to tell us that they are to increase spending on schools by 0.1% each year. However, that takes no account of the fact that the pupil premium, which we were told would be extra, is included in that settlement. It is not extra money. It also fails to recognise that the growth in pupil numbers will mean a reduction in spending per pupil over the next four years.
Those schools will be left in unsuitable buildings, with a decreasing amount of money per pupil. They will also have to suffer the problems caused by council cuts. Services that they used to receive from local councils are gradually being reduced, and they will have to purchase them elsewhere. I give one example; the council is already considering withdrawing IT support for schools. That would give rise to further problems.
I turn to the Government’s decision on the education maintenance allowance. Almost 2,000 young people in Warrington receive the EMA. That money has made a real difference to participation rates in education; £10, £20 or £30 may not seem much to some, but it allows the poorer families in my constituency to pay bus fares to college, gives young people money to buy lunch and is has helped some to buy stationery and other things that they need for their courses. Those are all things that the poorer families find difficult to purchase.
Reducing that allowance will make a real difference to participation rates in education, because the money has worked during the past few years; it has increased the number of students staying on and the number of students in my constituency who go into higher education. The number of students in my constituency going into higher education rose by more than half in the 10 years from 1999 to 2009.
It seems that we will get in return a fund that will be used by head teachers and principals. I have tried asking the Government what the criteria will be for the allocation of that money and I cannot find out. In the last Education questions, I asked whether head teachers had been consulted about this change and the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning was terribly courteous, but he just did not answer my question. He also did not tell me whether there would be an appeals process. So we do not know how that money will be allocated and it seems that we are moving from a system in which people receive money according to their income—as of right—to a type of “Lady Bountiful” system, in which money will be dished out by head teachers. Actually, I doubt that many head teachers want to do that.
What we do know is that the Government will be saving more than £500 million on the EMA, but they will be allocating only £150 million to the new scheme. That means a huge reduction in the cash available to the poorest students. Although the Government tell us that they want to increase participation and staying-on rates, they will the ends without willing the means.
At Warrington Collegiate in my constituency, 61% of students aged between 16 and 18 are in receipt of EMA and a third of the intake is from areas of multiple deprivation. Warrington Collegiate strongly fears that removing EMA will mean fewer students coming through the college.
Warrington Collegiate also faces another cut in its budget. It is clear from the comprehensive spending review that the unit costs for 16 to 19-year-olds will be reduced. Warrington Collegiate does not yet know how that reduction will feed through into its budget. It expects a cut of at least 3%. May I repeat that those 16 to 19-year-olds are the very people whom the Government say they want to keep in education?
To add insult to injury, the university of Chester, which has a large campus in Warrington, has seen 88.5% of its teaching funding go. That is all the teaching funding for group C and group D courses, and probably half the funding for group B courses. The university estimates that to fill that gap it will have to charge fees of £7,000. The university is vital to Warrington and its economic development and to the development of the Omega site, which is a huge employment creation site in my constituency. The university of Chester has done tremendous work with schools to increase aspirations and to get more young people from families where no one has been to university before to enter higher education.
The results of this decision to cut funding could be very serious indeed for the courses that are provided at the Warrington campus such as courses in creative industries, business, media and sport. It is fashionable to sniff at those courses, but the Minister knows as well as I do that most of the graduates from those courses actually get jobs. It will be a very serious matter for young people in my constituency if they can no longer gain access to that facility.
In effect, what we are seeing is a triple whammy. I have no time today to go into the axing of the programmes for rebuilding special schools in my constituency, or what will happen with the reduction in school support staff, or the further reductions in council services. However, we have seen the building programme cut, we are seeing funding cut and we are seeing support for students cut. The impact of those cuts on the poorest wards and the poorest families in my constituency cannot be overestimated. The Government tell us that we are all “in this together”, but these are the very people who do not have the resources to replace that funding.
I say to the Minister that that is wrong on two counts. First, it is wrong economically. We all know that in the future unskilled jobs will start to disappear, and that the future of this country is in producing a skilled and educated population. We cannot underbid other countries in wages all the time; we have to gain on skills. Without education provision, however, our skills will not improve.
Secondly, it is wrong morally. “Morally” is not a word that we often use in Parliament, but I believe that these cuts are wrong morally. It is morally wrong to penalise our poorest communities and our poorest families in this way.
I know that the Minister is a decent man and that he has a real concern for underprivileged students in education. I hope that he will listen to the case that I—along with many others in their own communities—am making, because if we do not get changes in this policy what will happen is very simple. Fewer of our young people will stay on in education; fewer will go into higher education, and this country will suffer for many years ahead as a result. Young people are our most precious resource. We ought to be caring for and husbanding that resource, rather than chopping it off.
There used to be a slogan among the teaching unions—I think that it was used at the time of the last Tory Government—that, “If you think education’s expensive, try ignorance”. I think that we are in danger of trying ignorance. The people in my constituency whom I have talked about today will suffer hugely as a result, and I hope that the Minister will give the facts that I have outlined serious consideration.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing the debate. I know that she has been a tremendous champion of education, not only in Warrington but nationally, having served for many years on the Select Committee on Education. As she kindly said, for some of those years we served on the Committee together. I always enjoyed working with her on the various reports that the Committee produced and I have listened very carefully to her comments today.
In Warrington, the attainment of children and young people across each key stage is consistently above, or well above, the national average. For example, the proportion of 16-year-olds in Warrington achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C was 10% higher than the national level or the level in similar local authority areas.
Helen Jones
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister before he gets into his stride—he is very generous in giving way. However, does he accept that those figures mask huge disparities within the borough and that, although schools in deprived areas have taken tremendous strides, there is still a disparity between the more affluent areas and the poorer areas?
Mr Gibb
Yes—I was coming on to that point. I was not citing those figures as a reason not to take action; I merely wanted to point out what has been achieved in Warrington already.
In 2009, the proportion of 11-year-olds in Warrington achieving expected levels of attainment in both English and maths was 77%, compared to 72% in all schools in England. However, as the hon. Lady intimated, within Warrington, as in many other areas of the country, performance varies significantly from school to school. There are excellent schools in Warrington, as there are many excellent schools nationally, but it is also the case that too many schools are still struggling or coasting. The results at national level and the large gaps in performance between different groups of pupils are why we believe urgent reform is needed.
It is the Government’s ambition to raise academic standards in all this country’s schools to ensure a high-quality education for all children, particularly those from poorer backgrounds. The Government’s key objective is to close that attainment gap between those from the wealthiest backgrounds and those from the poorest backgrounds. We therefore share the hon. Lady’s aim that she set out in her remarks. Education is key to social mobility—indeed, in my opinion it is the only route to social mobility. That is why we announced yesterday our focus on ensuring that every child has mastered the basic skill of decoding and reading words by the end of the second year of primary school, through a light-touch screening check.
That is why we also sought to put onto the statute book the Academies Act 2010, to enable us to expand the academies programme, with 144 new academies having opened since the start of the academic year. That Act for the first time enables primary and special schools to become academies and to enjoy the greater freedoms that academy status brings.
David Mowat
I am interested in what the Minister is saying about social mobility. Does he recognise that in the past decade, we as a nation have slipped from fourth to 14th in science teaching and from eighth to 24th in mathematics teaching? The impact of that will have been felt in Warrington. Those statistics are a damning indictment of our ability to be socially mobile. Science, technology, engineering and maths, more than anything else, will provide jobs and skills for the future.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I know that he has been campaigning in Warrington for his schools, and I congratulate him on his work, as I congratulate the hon. Lady on hers. On his point, that is why we are considering the national curriculum with the intention of restoring it to its intended purpose of providing a minimum core entitlement built around subject discipline. It is also why we are enabling parents, teachers and other education providers to set up free schools, so parents have a real choice for their children.
Good school buildings, though, are part of that package. School buildings need continuing investment, but it is vital that future spending represents the best possible value for money. Building Schools for the Future was an important programme of the previous Administration, which aimed to rebuild or refurbish every one of our 3,500 secondary schools by 2023. That was a bold and impressive ambition, but unfortunately the programme has failed spectacularly to live up to the hype. During five years of the programme, just 263 schools have benefited. The number of schools completely rebuilt under the programme is even smaller: just 136. That is a very small number for such a grand ambition.
Where BSF has delivered, it has been at exorbitant cost. As has been pointed out, rebuilding a school under BSF has turned out to be three times more expensive than constructing a commercial building and twice as expensive as building a school in Ireland, while the BSF budget has grown from £45 billion to £55 billion and the time scale has increased from 10 years to a projected 18. Some of the reasons for the additional cost and delay are understandable, but the fact remains that BSF had become a vast and confusing morass of process and cost by the time it was ended, and it represented extremely poor value for money. Some £60 million of the £250 million spent on BSF was frittered away on consultants and advisory costs before a brick had even been laid.
David Mowat
The Minister might be aware that the average cost of bidding for a BSF project was about £1 million, which is approximately the cost of a new primary school. Does that not say all that there is to be said about the waste implicit in the programme? Everybody wants more and better schools. Two schools in my constituency, Sir Thomas Boteler and Penketh high schools, desperately need refurbishment, but that must be done cost-effectively, not while frittering away money as BSF did.
Mr Gibb
That is where we want the money to go: not on consultants, but on refurbishment and bricks.
Nobody comes into politics to cut funding, least of all a new Government who have inherited a school system that we are worried lets down too many of its pupils. However, we are faced with a £156 billion budget deficit, and it is our responsibility—difficult and painful though it might be—to tackle that problem. Although we have announced the end of the BSF programme, that does not mean the end of capital spending on schools.
The hon. Lady will be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) has organised a meeting with my noble Friend Lord Hill at the Department for Education to make the case for Warrington schools. Also present will be the leader of the council and the head teachers of several schools that have been affected. I know that she is to attend that meeting as well, to represent the schools in her constituency.
In determining which projects would go ahead and which would cease, the Government developed a single set of criteria and applied it nationally. The three types of school project allowed to continue were: those projects that were part of their area’s initial BSF schemes and had reached financial close; the so-called sample projects that were part of their area’s initial BSF schemes, where financial close had not been reached but a preferred bidder had been appointed at close of dialogue; and some planned school projects in addition to a local authority’s initial scheme.
As the hon. Lady will know, Warrington formally entered the BSF programme in February 2010. As Warrington did not have any sample schemes or an outline business case approved before 1 January 2010, the Warrington scheme was stopped. I recognise that those areas close to the cut-off point for BSF, including the hon. Lady’s constituency, might find that extremely frustrating and upsetting, and I am acutely aware that stopping the BSF programmes for schools in her constituency has, understandably, caused dismay among students, teachers and parents. However, it is important to remember that the end of BSF does not mean the end of capital spending on schools. Money will still be spent on school buildings, but it is imperative, as my hon. Friend pointed out, that that money is spent on school infrastructure and buildings, not on the process, especially if we are to meet increasing demand for school places over the coming years as the birth rate rises.
To correct the hon. Lady, cash per pupil is per-pupil cash. Funding for schools will be maintained at the same amount of cash per pupil, so schools’ expanding pupil population will not affect it. On top of that, the pupil premium will come from outside the schools budget, meaning that over four years, spending on schools will rise in real terms.
Helen Jones
Will the Minister confirm that the pupil premium is included in the 0.1% increase and is not extra money? That is what the figures say that I have seen.
Mr Gibb
Yes. The £2.5 billion is what enables us to deliver real-terms increases across the schools budget.
We appointed a review to consider how capital spending will be allocated in future. The hon. Lady discussed the Green Book allocation process; we will be considering the new basis on which scarce resources will be allocated. We appointed Sebastian James to conduct a root-and-branch review of all capital investment in schools, sixth-form colleges and other services for which the Department is responsible. The review is due to report back at the end of December. It will consider how best to meet parental demand, make design and procurement cost-effective and efficient, and overhaul the allocation and targeting of capital. That will give us the means to ensure that future decisions on capital spending are based on actual need and that all schools provide an environment that supports high-quality education.
Given the fact that the review is still in progress, I am sure that the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend will understand that I cannot make any specific commitments today on how much money will be allocated or exactly when. However, I assure them that the Department will continue to make capital allocations on the basis of need, in particular on dilapidation and deprivation, and that the end of BSF does not therefore mean the end of school building.
David Mowat
Does the Minister agree that this week’s announcement by Councillor Woodyatt, who has been mentioned extensively in this debate, of a new primary school in Warrington North, Oakwood avenue, is an example of the fact that capital spending is continuing? Not everything has been stopped by the hiatus in BSF.
Mr Gibb
Again, my hon. Friend makes a worthwhile intervention, for which I am grateful. Capital spending is being conducted, and several hundred schools are continuing work under the BSF programme.
The hon. Lady spoke about the education maintenance allowance. I acknowledge that evidence from the pilots shows that the EMA was successful, in its early days, in encouraging young people to stay in education. The decision to end the scheme will be disappointing to many young people, but I do not believe that anyone will have to drop out of education as a consequence. Already, 96% of 16-year-olds and 94% of 17-year-olds participate in education, employment or training. Attitudes to staying in education post-16 have changed. We are committed to going further still and attaining full participation by all young people up to the age of 18 by 2015.
However, a payment designed as an incentive to stay on is no longer the right way to ensure that those facing real financial barriers to continuing their education get the support that they need. We must reconsider the most effective way to support the most vulnerable young people to stay on in education. There is evidence that the EMA has helped a small number of young people stay on, but the same evidence suggests that the scheme has a significant dead-weight cost. Pilot evidence throughout the scheme and more recent research from the National Foundation for Educational Research found that almost 90% of young people receiving the EMA believe that they still would have participated in their courses if they had not received it.
The EMA is a hugely expensive programme, costing more than £560 million a year, £36 million of which is administration. Of course we do not want any young person to drop out of education due to financial difficulty, but we cannot justify continuing to fund a programme so expensive and poorly targeted. Currently, a discretionary learner support fund gives £25 million a year to schools, colleges and training providers to enable payments to be made to young people to help them meet the cost of their education. Colleges value the fund and are happy to play Lady Bountiful, as the hon. Lady said, by handing out the money to the young people whom they consider to be most in need. They can also respond to changes in students’ household income during the year. After the EMA is abolished, the fund will be increased significantly over the spending review period. The detail of future arrangements is still being considered.
Dartford Crossing (Congestion)
(14 years ago)
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Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I am pleased to open the debate and to have secured a discussion on the biggest local issue facing Dartford. As the time allowed for the debate is short, I will try to cover as many points as I can and, with your leave, Mr Rosindell, I will take interventions, about which I have spoken to the Minister. Of course, I will also leave time for the Minister to respond.
Hon. Members will know that the Dartford crossing is probably the most congested part of the country’s motorway network. Tailbacks regularly stretch for miles on both the Kent and Essex sides of the crossing and cause delay and misery for motorists. The crossing is a scar on the face of Dartford. When a problem exists by the crossing, local roads in Dartford also become congested with motorists trying to find alternative routes. The crossing should open up Dartford and encourage businesses to base themselves in the area; instead, it holds it back and strangles commerce. A continuation of the status quo is not an option for the Dartford crossing.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend not only on securing the debate, but on the passionate way he has fought for the issue with different agencies over the years. I applaud his commitment to that. He mentioned Dartford being affected by the crossing, but does he also agree that it affects constituencies around Dartford in terms of businesses, people travelling and holiday makers? It is absolutely vital for the whole of the south-east that we get this right.
Gareth Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I totally agree with him. The issue affects the whole of the Thames Gateway area—not least Gillingham and Rainham, which are particularly pertinent to him. It is essential that we tackle congestion on the Dartford crossing in order to open up the whole area and allow business to flourish across the Thames Gateway network.
I am pleased that the Minister shares my view that a continuation of the status quo is not an option for the Dartford crossing. Although we may disagree on some issues regarding the crossing, I pay tribute to his work on tackling the problem. His positive, can-do attitude to dealing with the problem has led to more progress on the issue during the six months he has been the relevant Minister than in the whole of the last 13 years. His determination to remove the toll booths, which ultimately cause the congestion, is to be welcomed. I have noticed that each time a difficulty with removing the toll booths has been presented to him, he has not simply thrown the papers away and given up on the notion of removing the booths; instead, he has sought to find a solution that tackles that problem.
I want to make it clear that the tolls on the Dartford crossing should be scrapped in their entirety. That is what was promised to the residents of Dartford by the previous Government. We were told that the tolls would be scrapped when the bridge had been paid for. That happened in 2003, yet the tolls remain. Today, I call on the Minister to scrap the tolls completely.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He and the Minister will be well aware that I am also in favour of scrapping the tolls on the crossing. There has been a betrayal of what we were initially told about the bridge being free when it has paid for itself. However, I appreciate that we are currently in a tough financial and economic situation. Congestion is a real issue in my borough of Bexley and for my constituents of Bexleyheath and Crayford, as well for businesses and residents of other constituencies. I therefore endorse what my hon. Friend says. Does he agree that we should pursue more radical solutions with the Minister, such as removing the toll booths, and that we should also consider the more effective use of free-flow technology by promoting and developing the DART-Tag scheme further?
Gareth Johnson
I totally agree with my hon. Friend’s comments. I am fully aware of the problems that Bexleyheath and Crayford suffer as a result of the congestion at the Dartford crossing. The No. 1 challenge is to remove the booths themselves, because they are the cause of congestion on the crossing. The tailbacks emanate from the booths and, without them, there would be a dramatic improvement in—and perhaps even the eradication of—the congestion on the Dartford crossing that causes problems in Bexleyheath, Crayford and, of course, Dartford, Thurrock and the surrounding areas.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
My understanding is that by introducing free-flow technology, of course, there would be an increase in capacity on the crossing. However, that would give only a one-off increase of approximately 20%. In recent years, the volume of traffic using the crossing has increased exponentially. Does my hon. Friend agree that ultimately we need an additional crossing somewhere else on the Thames to enable traffic to be diverted from the M25 on to another crossing?
Gareth Johnson
I am grateful for that intervention. In principle, I accept that there should be a further crossing over the Thames. The big issue is, of course, where that crossing should be. It is a classic case of nimbyism. I do not think anyone here would hold their hand up and ask for a further crossing to be placed in their constituency. Doing so would add further congestion and difficulties to the particular areas that we represent. Finding a location for an extra crossing over the Thames area is problematic and will be the biggest challenge of all in trying to ensure that we have greater capacity for vehicles to get across the Thames.
We have recently had an announcement that the price of the tolls should be increased. I cannot accept that extra levy on the motorist, who is feeling fairly beleaguered in this particular part of the country. At the general election, I said that unlike my predecessor I would never vote to keep the tolls on the Dartford crossing and that I would only vote to scrap them. I meant that. The Transport Act 2000 was supported by Labour MPs and opposed by Conservative MPs. That piece of legislation allowed the tolls to continue and, ironically, changed them from a toll to a form of congestion charge. I say “ironically” because the tolls actually cause the congestion on the crossing. In this case, the congestion charge itself is responsible for causing the congestion.
I welcome the Department for Transport’s confirmation that the previous Government’s announcement of the privatisation of the crossing will not take place. We have overturned the previous Labour Government’s policy of selling off the Dartford crossing. If the Labour party had won the last general election, the crossing would have been sold to a private company and we would have lost control over the levying of charges on the motorist. Perhaps that is why there are not too many Labour MPs in this Chamber championing this cause. The local resident discount scheme has financially helped some local residents who are frequent users of the crossing, but the initial outlay for the DART-Tag has put off local residents who use the crossing only occasionally.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
My hon. Friend knows that I share his long-term desire for the removal of tolls on the Dartford crossing. However, he will also be aware of the enormous sense of unfairness felt by many people in north Kent, who do not qualify for the resident discount scheme. Does he not agree that if the tolls are to stay in the foreseeable future, the local discount scheme should be extended to neighbouring authorities, such as Medway?
Gareth Johnson
My hon. Friend has championed that cause for the residents of Chatham and Aylesford for a considerable time, and I pay tribute to the work that she put into the issue. I am pleased that she shares my view that, ultimately, the solution to the problem is the removal of the tolls.
I hope that there is some scope to expand the local persons discount scheme. I am pleased to note that, although the scheme has some limitations, it is likely to apply to the proposed increases in the tolls. The introduction of the scheme coincided with an increase in the toll from £1 to £1.50, which left many more motorists needing change. The highways authority has informed me that it has had to remove some of the automated toll booths to allow for that, which of course has increased the length of the queues and led to the dreadful congestion we see today. It is no advantage to a local person who receives a discount if they have to wait in a queue for three hours to get it.
Removing the booths and replacing them with modern technology to levy a charge on motorists would remove the two worst aspects of the crossing, the congestion and the pollution, but it would not remove the costs. Local businesses have told me that the congestion is the worst problem for them. They can budget for the cost of using the crossing, but they cannot budget for the unpredictable nature of the congestion.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I endorse that point on behalf of businesses in my constituency. The cost of congestion is really adding to the cost of doing business, and at a time when we want to see expansion in south Essex, that is unacceptable. We really need to grip that problem.
Gareth Johnson
Members will be aware that the area of Thurrock that is closest to the crossing is an industrial area, and the same is true in some parts of Dartford. We have the Crossways boulevard, which is as area of industrial strength, but it could be so much better were it not for the congestion. For the reasons to which my hon. Friend alluded and the potential benefit for businesses in Dartford, I believe that local businesses will welcome the Minister’s proposals and the removal of the booths themselves, which should lead ultimately to the removal of the congestion.
The congestion at the Dartford crossing has united Dartford against the current toll booths system. Local people despise the impact that it has had on the area, as we have had nothing but misery, congestion and pollution as a result. The local media have played their part in lobbying for the congestion to be tackled. The Dartford Times has had a “Stop the Toll” campaign, the Dartford Messenger has had the “Axe the Tax” campaign, and the News Shopper has also campaigned hard on the matter. They are all correct to do so, because I believe that the only complete solution to the enormous problem is for the tolls to be scrapped entirely.
The Minister’s proposals are a vast improvement on the current situation. They will ensure that there need be no more congestion at the Dartford crossing than anywhere else on the M25. The previous Government did absolutely nothing about the congestion at the Dartford crossing. We had 13 years of inaction. They introduced a local discount scheme, but although it lowered costs, it increased congestion. They announced a plan to sell off the whole crossing. It is yet another mess that we have inherited and that we are trying to resolve. It is a problem that has been ignored for the past 13 years, a problem with which I am pleased that we are now beginning to get to grips.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
It is a pleasure and an honour to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Rosindell. What an ironic coincidence it is that you are chairing a debate on a matter that is so important in your constituency, a part of the world that I know well. I know that the correct protocol for Ministers, quite rightly, is to address the Chamber when speaking on behalf of the Government, but it will be quite difficult to do so as the Opposition Benches are completely empty. I apologise if I have to turn my back to Members who are present for this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on being so persistent about the matter, and on securing the debate. It is a shame that it is only a half-hour debate, as I know that colleagues on this side of the Chamber would have liked to spend more time debating the issues that are so relevant to their constituents.
In the short time I have been a Minister, I have encountered few issues that raise as much local and national concern as has the Thames crossing between Thurrock and Dartford. As a former fireman, I have on too many occasions attended incidents on the Essex side of the crossing where road traffic accidents—road traffic collisions, or whatever modern term we use today—have taken place because people were so frustrated that they took risks. I would ask the drivers and passengers what the cause of the accident was, and all too often they replied that it was anger, frustration and concern that they were being delayed in going about their business or doing their personal duties. Whether they were going north or south, they were usually delayed for one reason: the toll booths on the Kent side of the river.
I am determined, with the Secretary of State’s permission, to do everything we can to alleviate that congestion and pollution. We have not had enough time to debate the pollution, but on both sides of the river it is blighting the lives of many constituents. Visitors to the country are also affected, as 20% of all heavy goods vehicles travelling north through both bores are foreign. The crossing is the lifeblood of the country’s economy. It is invariably how traffic gets from the south to the north.
We have looked carefully at the situation in these difficult times. I fully respect the position of hon. Members who have campaigned over the years to have the previous Government’s promise to remove the tolls honoured. However, we are in really difficult economic times, and the £70 million a year gross revenue that the tolls take in is an important part of the money available for the infrastructure and transport network for the whole country. I know that the matter is really personal for those in that part of the world, but it is a piece of national infrastructure, and the Transport Act 2000 specifically states that the net value of the tolls should be used in transport infrastructure. It is one of the few hypothecated sources of revenue that we have.
I will outline quickly what we have done in the short time we have been able to address a situation that has been going on for years. The first thing we asked was whether it is right in the 21st century to delay people, sometimes for hours, when we expect them to pay a fee to use a crossing. When the tolls are causing the problem and the resulting tailbacks become unacceptably long, we have been releasing the toll charge. In other words, we have lifted the barriers at those times and people are not being charged. There is currently no guidance on how long the tailbacks have to be before we do that, so we hope to have a protocol in place in the new year so that people will know exactly what that distance will be.
That is just an interim measure, because we all know that the way to address the congestion and pollution is to have free flow charging. For the foreseeable future we will have to impose a toll, so how do we minimise the effect on the user while recouping the income? Fantastically, the congestion charge uses vehicle number plate recognition, and it works well. We intend to use that technology to remove the barriers at the north and south of the crossing.
The toll booths are what is really holding up the traffic. As we heard earlier in the debate, the delays are actually being caused by people trying to find change, not realising that they have to pay, or losing their DART-Tag. If we remove the toll booths altogether so that people can drive across the bridge or through the bores, that delay will be removed. Although we are looking at whether we can enhance the number of vehicles that can use the bridge, and 20% seems to be the figure we are looking at, particularly for the bridge—I will come back to the bores in a moment—it is surely fair to the user, whether local or national, that there is free flow.
A considerable amount of construction work is required to realign the road so that there is a straight run, particularly when vehicles come off the bridge. Otherwise, at junction 1A, as those of us who are familiar with that part of the world know, they would be dog-legging to the right at that optimal speed of 50 mph, which will be the speed at which they will be allowed to come down. There will be a great deal of work and cost involved in doing that, and a great deal of technology needs to be put in place as well. Some of that technology is already there. The average-speed cameras will be commissioned soon, and we intend to start commissioning beyond the bridge and back towards junction 2 as the public get used to the 50 mph speed that we want them to use to come across the bridge safely and go towards the bores.
The money will come specifically from the increase in the toll. I would love to have informed the House today that we do not need the 50p from 2011 and 2012, because, obviously, I do not like taxing the British public. However, we need that money, which will be hypothecated for the work we need to do and to pay not only for the non-charging, which we will implement as a short-term measure, but for the free-flow tolling and then—this was touched on by colleagues—to look at a business plan for a new lower Thames crossing.
We all know that the capacity and growth that this country needs will mean that we will struggle, particularly going north. Why will there be such a problem going north? It is because the two bores are not the same size. The inside bore is smaller, so we will struggle to keep a free flow going while oversize vehicles move into the outside lane to go through the larger bore. That is a big technical issue. We still intend to remove the barriers, but we will have to use the matrix signs to slow the traffic going north or halt it so that those vehicles can move across. That will always be a problem.
Secondly, where there is congestion—for example, on the M25 in the Essex section—we cannot legally allow traffic to sit in the tunnel for any length of time. It is not safe, and we have no intention of doing that. Therefore, as we look forward to developing different plans, we have to start to ask whether we will invest some of the money that we are recouping from the region—the net income at the moment is £45 million—in a business plan. As we develop the concept, we must ask, first, whether we should build a bridge or a tunnel, and, secondly, where it will go. Of course, there will be investment not just in the crossing but in the infrastructure on the Essex and Kent sides, which must be linked in.
That was brought home to me starkly when I visited some of my old stomping grounds in Essex recently and, as the Minister with responsibility for shipping, was taken on to the river by the Port of London Authority. I have a dual role when it comes to that part of the country. I spoke to business people who told me that they owned land on the Kent side but had no intention of using it because they could not guarantee that they would be able to get their vehicles across the bridge and back. That is stifling the economy and growth. I freely admit that not one of them has said to me, “We can’t afford to do this; we think that the 50p is going to be a problem for us.” I am sure that there are businesses that will be affected by it, but what they were looking at was the ability to have a business plan that worked. In other words, if they need to get from A to B, and that happens to be from the Kent coast up through the midlands, how can they plan for that when they know, for instance, that they will be queuing at peak times—and sometimes not at peak times?
Several colleagues have written to me in the past couple of days to ask why we did not suspend the toll charges when the winds were bad the other day. The reason was that it was not the barriers that were causing the problem; we had to close the bridge because of the wind. The bridge was not designed brilliantly well—hindsight is a wonderful thing—and does not have the kind of protection from winds exceeding 50 mph that we would expect from a modern bridge. That meant that use of the bridge had to be suspended, and we reverted to using the two bores in the two tunnels—that almost took me back to my youth. I accept that that caused a great deal of trouble. Was the problem caused by the infrastructure or by the tolling? It was caused by the infrastructure not being fit for purpose.
As we work together—I hope that we can—on this project in the next couple of months, I hope to be able to bring in colleagues from all parties who represent constituencies in and around the Dartford river crossing area. I always wonder why we call it the Dartford river crossing area when Thurrock is on the other side. We should call it the Thurrock-Dartford river crossing. I stood as a parliamentary candidate in Thurrock in 2001, and I know only too well that it could be a fantastic growth area if there were confidence in the bridge.
I understand that there may be disappointment that the tolls were not removed when the previous agreement was in place, but I have to stand here as the Minister and say what will be the best outcome for the country as a whole, and for the constituents of hon. Friends who are here today. There are two things that I can do: I can give them confidence in the future that, by removing the barriers so that traffic will have free flow, local people will be able to cross regularly, whether they are going to work or moving socially from north to south and south to north.
The other thing that I need to come back to is the effect on the environment when that free flow comes in. It is of paramount importance that we look after not only the economy of this country but our constituents. We know that the levels of pollution are unacceptably high—particularly when there are problems going north, and because of how close residential properties are to the roads—and are likely to increase. Even though we are driving down emissions, we know from the sheer number of HGVs that come through that we will have issues with that.
We can move as fast as we can for free flow to take place, but we must ensure that the technology works and that local residents have confidence in the local discount schemes. I hope you will not mind my saying this, Mr Rosindell: the take-up of the schemes was as high as we all expected. However, if there are complications—I know that local residents find the schemes complicated—perhaps hon. Members could drop me a line about their concerns.
We are spreading the scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) was looking at that, and it has been put forward many times. The problem is where to stop. I fully understand that the people who live nearby get a discount and that others just down the road do not, but we have to draw the line somewhere.
Mr Evennett
Bexley residents are much closer to the bridge and the tunnel than many others, but they do not have a discount scheme. Will they be included in the Minister’s thoughts?
Mike Penning
They are certainly included in my thoughts—my hon. Friend uses a good piece of terminology. I am more than willing to look at that, but if I take the discount away from some and give it to others, I will get just as many complaints from the other side. I have to look at the revenue. The key at present is not to have a cash cow but to use the money to make the environment better for my hon. Friend’s constituents in the future.
I hope that this will not be the last debate on the subject. This is not a bid for being here every day, or on a regular basis, but I hope that colleagues will engage with my officials, my Department and me to get the best option. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford said earlier that we may not agree on everything, but let us work together on those things we do agree on. Let us use this opportunity to develop the economy and the environment, and to make the area a much better place for everyone to live and work in.
Rehman Chishti
Will every avenue be followed to ensure full and thorough consultation with local authorities and residents in the areas that are proposed for any future Thames crossing?
Mike Penning
There will be full consultation on that, just as there will be consultation now on the toll increases. Of course consultation will take place, but we must ensure that whatever is built is fit for purpose not just for us today, but for future generations.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford on securing this debate, and I hope we can work with other colleagues on this project.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Attorney-General’s total DEL will be increased by £10,977,000 from £686,875,000 to £697,852,000. Within the total DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 10,977 | - | 659,077 | 36,182 | 695,259 |
of which: | |||||
Administration budget | - | - | 60,948 | - | 60,948 |
Capital DEL1 | - | - | 11,840 | - | 11,840 |
Less Depreciation2 | - | - | -9,247 | - | -9,247 |
Total DEL | 10,977 | - | 661,670 | 36,182 | 697,852 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) element of the Attorney-General’s total DEL will be increased by £8,185,000 from £633,242,000 to £641,427,000.
The change in Resource DEL arises from budgetary transfers totalling £8,185,000 from the Ministry of Justice consisting of
£4,300,000 to help fund the Compass Case Management System
£2,600,000 from Victim Surcharge collections
£785,000 to provide support for the Local Criminal Justice Boards
£500,000 to help fund the delivery of the Corporate Manslaughter Act 2007
The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) element of the Attorney-General’s total DEL will be increased by £2,792,000 from £38,754,000 to £41,546,000.
The change in Resource DEL arises from the take up of £2,792,000 in blockbuster funding relating to UN Oil for Food cases to enable the SFO to continue with the investigation and prosecution of outstanding cases in 2010-11.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ DEL will be reduced by £3,796,000 from £20,805,607,000 to £20,801,811,000 and the Administration budget will be increased by £2,300,000 from £321,187,000 to £323,487,000.
Within the DEL change, the impact on Resources and Capital is as set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-Voted | Voted | Non-Voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource (£000) | (220,865) | 217,069 | 7,772,927 | 11,263,059 | 19,035,986 |
of which: | |||||
Administration1 budget | 2,300 | 0 | 319,843 | 3,644 | 323,487 |
Near cash in Resource DEL2 | (220,965) | 217,169 | 6,210,394 | 11,094,742 | 17,305,136 |
Capital (£000) | (27,085) | 27,085 | 699,571 | 1,302,762 | 2,002,333 |
Less Depreciation3 (£000) | (100) | 100 | (68,191) | (168,317) | (236,508) |
Total (£000) | (248,050) | 244,254 | 8,404,307 | 12,397,504 | 20,801,811 |
1The total of the 'Administration Budget' and 'Near Cash in Resource DEL' figures may well be greater than total Resource DEL, due to the definitions overlapping. 2Capital DEL includes items treated as Resource in Estimates and Accounts, but which are treated as Capital DEL in Budgets. 3Depreciation, which forms part of Resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since Capital DEL includes Capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
RfR1
i) An increase in voted receipts from the Department for Work and Pensions of £6,179,000 and an increase of non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies in respect of self-employment programmes;
ii) A budget transfer from the Department for Work and Pensions of £413,000 of non-voted expenditure for the Regional Development Agencies in respect of the School Gates initiative;
iii) An increase in voted receipts from the Department for Transport of £228,000 and an increase of non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies in respect of delivering a sustainable transport system;
iv) A virement of £535,000 from voted expenditure to non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies in relation to National Business Link marketing;
v) Virements from voted expenditure by the Strategic Investment Fund to non-voted expenditure by the Technology Strategy Board for the establishment of the UK Life Sciences Super Cluster initiative (£595,000), to advance new “prize” funds in emerging technologies (£5,000,000), the Composites Challenge Fund (£6,000,000), and the Industrial Biotechnical Demonstrator Fund (£2,555,000);
vi) A virement from the Strategic Investment Fund to the Skills Funding Agency (RfR3) of £3,700,000 for the automotive industry;
vii) A virement of £97,000 from the Skills Funding Agency (RfR3) to non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies for Train to Gain;
viii) A virement of £350,000 from Higher Education participation programmes (RfR3) for joint BIS funding of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship;
ix) A virement of £20,000,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision to non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (RfR3);
x) A virement of £496,000 from Science and Society (RfR2) to corporate services;
xi) A virement of £2,533,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision for voted expenditure on research and analytical services (RfR3);
xii) A virement of £25,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision for voted expenditure on Government Skills (RfR3);
xiii) A virement of £3,102,000 consultancy savings (RfR3) to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision;
xiv) A virement of £60,000 from Premature Retirement Compensation and Voluntary Colleges (RfR3) to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision;
RfR2
i) A virement of £13,000 from voted Research-Based Initiatives to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision for Science;
ii) A virement of £496,000 from Science and Society to corporate services (RfR1);
RfR3
i) A virement from voted expenditure to non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England of Higher Education Shared Services (£20,000,000), the Higher Education Modernisation Fund (£133,000,000), Higher Education participation programmes (£10,500,000) and Annual Population Survey (£140,000);
ii) A virement of £14,000,000 from voted expenditure by the Skills Funding Agency to non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England;
iii) A transfer of £1,990,000 from the Department for Education to non-voted expenditure by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills for the National Vocational Qualifications Levy;
iv) A transfer of £4,280,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government for the Migration Impact Fund;
v) A transfer of £9,521,000 from the Ministry of Justice for Offender Learning;
vi) A transfer of £20,000,000 from the Skills Funding Agency to the Department for Education for Learners with Learning Difficulties and/or Disabilities;
vii) A virement of £2,533,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfR1) for voted expenditure on research and analytical services;
viii) A virement of £25,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfR1) for voted expenditure on Government Skills;
ix) A virement of £60,000 from Premature Retirement Compensation and Voluntary Colleges to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfRI);
x) A virement of £3,102,000 consultancy savings to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfR1);
xi) An increase of £4,176,000 in non-voted expenditure by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, and increased voted contributions from other Departments;
xii) A virement from the Strategic Investment Fund (RfR1) to the Skills Funding Agency of £3,700,000 for the Automotive Industry;
xiii) A virement of £97,000 from the Skills Funding Agency to non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies (RfR1) for Train to Gain;
xiv) A virement of £350,000 from Higher Education participation programmes to RfR1 for joint BIS funding of the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship;
xv) An increase in voted receipts of £823,000 from the Department for Education for “Routes into Languages” funding to be distributed as non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England;
xvi) An increase in voted receipts of £299,000 from the Department for Education for Repayment of Teacher Loan work to be undertaken by the non-voted Student Loans Company;
xvii) A virement of £930,000 to voted Higher Education Student Support from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England;
xviii) A virement of £6,048,000 from voted Higher Education Student Support to non-voted expenditure by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills;
xix) A virement of £4,904,000 from voted Higher Education Student Support to non-voted expenditure by the Student Loans Company;
xx) A virement of £100,000 from non-voted expenditure by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to Adult Skills and Learner Support;
xxi) A virement of £20,000,000 from the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfR1) to non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England;
Also within the change to resource DEL, the changes to the Administration budget are (RfR1):
i) A virement of £2,300,000 from programme to administration using the Digital Switchover helpscheme underspend to fund broadband expansion;
The change in the Capital element of the DEL arises from:
RfR1
i) A virement of £10,000,000 from voted expenditure by the London Development Agency to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision;
ii) A virement of £5,000,000 from voted expenditure of the Strategic Investment Fund to non-voted expenditure of the Technology Strategy Board for Competition IV - Low Carbon vehicle supply chains;
iii) An increase of £32,400,000 in voted receipts from the Department for Transport and an increase in non-voted expenditure by the Regional Development Agencies in respect of regional infrastructure funds;
iv) A virement of £5,000,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (RfR3) to voted expenditure by British Shipbuilders;
v) A virement of £1,860,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (RfR3) to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision;
vi) A virement of £13,140,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (RfR3) to non-voted Launch Investment Receipts;
RfR2
i) A Virement of £1,300,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Research Councils to the Research Capital Investment Fund;
RfR3
i) A virement of £15,000 from non-voted to voted capital in relation to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills;
vii) A virement of £14,000,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to voted expenditure by the Skills Funding Agency;
viii) A virement of £5,000,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to voted expenditure by British Shipbuilders (RfRI);
ix) A virement of £1,860,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to the non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision (RfR1);
x) A virement of £13,140,000 from non-voted expenditure by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to non-voted Launch Investment Receipts (RfRI).
Departmental Expenditure Limits (HM Revenue and Customs)
(14 years ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the supplementary estimate, the HM Revenue & Customs total DEL will be decreased by £500,000 from £3,706,842,000 to £3,706,342,000. Within the total DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 37,771 | -38,271 | 3,311,284 | 425,976 | 3,737,260 |
Of which: | |||||
Administration Budget1 | 37,771 | -38,271 | 3,586,418 | 79,437 | 3,665,855 |
Capital | 2,415 | -2,415 | 211,549 | - | 211,549 |
Less Depreciation2 | - | - | -242,467 | - | -242,467 |
Total DEL | 40,186 | -40,686 | 3,280,366 | 425,976 | 3,706,342 |
1The total of 'Administration Budget' figures may well be greater than total resource DEL, due to the definitions overlapping. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the resource element of DEL arises from:
A transfer of £500,000 administration costs to the Cabinet Office Security and Intelligence Agencies, as HMRC’s share of funding Information Assurance Activities.
The take up of £38,335,000 non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision as voted administration costs to facilitate improvements to key operational activities (DEL neutral).
A decrease in voted DEL of £64,000 with respect to administration cash leasing costs under International Financial Reporting Standards, which transfer to non-voted DEL (DEL neutral).
The change in the administration budget arises from the specific administration items detailed in the resource element above.
The change in the capital element of DEL arises from:
The take up of £2,415,000 non-voted Departmental Unallocated Provision as voted capital costs to facilitate improvements to key operational activities (DEL neutral).
Departmental Expenditure Limits (Resource)
(14 years ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
Subject to Parliamentary approval of the winter supplementary estimate, HM Treasury’s Resource DEL will be decreased by £20,657,000 from £206,740,000 to £186,083,000. The Administration Budget will be decreased by £21,957,000 from £159,551,000 to £137,594,000. The impact on resources, including the administration budget, is set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | -20,657,000 | - | 152,359,000 | 33,724,000 | 186,083,000 |
Of which: | |||||
Administration Budget1 | -21,957,000 | - | 126,485,000 | 11,109,000 | 137,594,000 |
Capital | - | - | 45,3000,000 | 3,400,000 | 48,700,000 |
Less Depreciation2 | - | - | -6,725,000 | - | -6,725,000 |
Total DEL | -20,657,000 | - | 190,934,000 | 37,124,000 | 228,058,000 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The net reductions in resource DEL of £20,657,000 and Administration Budget of £21,957,000 are the net effect of the transfer of responsibility for the Office of Government Commerce to the Cabinet Office following the Machinery of Government transfer announced on 15 June 2010.
Departmental Expenditure Limits (National Savings & Investments)
(14 years ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, National Savings and Investments (NS&I) departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased by £15,994,000 to £168,402,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are set out in the following table:
£’000 | Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 15,994 | -4,994 | 168,402 | - | 168,402 |
Of which: | - | ||||
Administration Budget | 15,994 | -4,994 | 168,402 | - | 168,402 |
Near cash in RDEL | 15,994 | -4,994 | 164,769 | - | 164,769 |
Capital | - | - | 464 | - | 464 |
Less Depreciation1 | - | - | -2,983 | - | -2,983 |
Total DEL | 15,994 | -4,994 | 165,883 | - | 165,883 |
1Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the resource element of DEL (£15,994,000) is required to continue the delivery of NS&I’s adding value strategy for both the modernisation and simplification of infrastructure and products. To facilitate this, NS&I has included the following items in its winter supplementary estimate:
Resource DEL end year flexibility (£6.0 million),
DEL Reserve claim (£5.0 million),
Departmental Unallocated Provision (£4.994 million).
Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill (Ministerial Correction)
(14 years ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
On 15 November the Financial Secretary to the Treasury reported to Parliament on the operation of the UK’s Counter-Terrorist Asset Freezing Regime for the period July to September 2010.
During the Second Reading of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill, I responded to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) about figures published in the report. My response appears on 15 November, Official Report, column 708.
The explanation I gave of the figures was incorrect. For the purpose of transparency and to ensure the report is correctly interpreted in the future I would like to clarify that explanation.
As of 30 September 2010, a total of 205 accounts containing just under £290,000 of suspected terrorist funds were frozen in the UK.
Of that £290,000 approximately £140,000 was frozen under the UK’s domestic terrorist asset freezing regime, which is mandated by UNSCR 1373 and implemented by the legislation which the Bill is intended to replace. The remaining £150,000 was frozen under the UN al-Qaeda and Taliban asset-freezing regime.
Directgov (Review)
(14 years ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I invited Martha Lane Fox, the Government’s digital champion, to undertake a strategic review of Directgov which was completed on 14 October 2010. This supported the work that the Efficiency and Reform Board had undertaken on channel shift and the opportunity for digital channels to support delivery of the spending review. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and I wrote to Departments in September outlining our commitment to improving services and driving efficiencies by making digital the default channel for Government information and transactional services.
Martha Lane Fox submitted her report “Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution” to me in October. The report places Directgov in the context of how Government should use the internet both to communicate and interact better with citizens and to deliver significant efficiency savings from making digital the default delivery channel for Government information and services.
I have written to Martha Lane Fox today thanking her for her report and saying that I am minded to accept her proposals in full, but that I will need to consult colleagues before making any final decisions about how to take them forward. I have placed Martha Lane Fox’s report and my response in the Library. Both documents are also available on the Cabinet Office website (www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk)
I expect quick and broad agreement on some of Martha Lane Fox’s proposals where we can make rapid progress and that in some areas—such as moving to a single domain for Government—I will have to work with Departments to test different approaches and work through the details and timescales. It is important to set a clear direction of travel and that is what I have done in my reply as the initial Government response to Martha Lane Fox’s proposals.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the winter supplementary estimate 2010-11, the Cabinet Office total departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased by £229,588,000 from £329,499,000 to £559,087,000.
The impact on resources and capital is set out in the following table:
Departmental Expenditure Limits
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
Subject to Parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Communities and Local Government’s departmental expenditure limits for 2010-11 will change as follows:
Section 1: Main Programmes DEL
1. The Department for Communities and Local Government’s Main DEL will be decreased by £83,471,000 from £9,937,138,000 to £9,853,667,000 and the administration budget will be increased by £290,000 from £261,722,000 to £262,012,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Change | NEW DEL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
Resource | -8,156 | -35,317 | 3,337,329 | 438,354 | 3,775,683 |
Of which | |||||
Administration budget | 290 | 260,334 | 1,678 | 262,012 | |
Capital 1 | -12,005 | -58,024 | 1,305,153 | 4,816,782 | 6,121,935 |
Depreciation 2 | 0 | 30,031 | -38,488 | -5,463 | -43,951 |
Total | -20,161 | -63,310 | 4,603,994 | 5,249,673 | 9,853,667 |
1 Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets 2 Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL, since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting |
2. The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
2.1 An internal transfer of £2,158,000 to Request for Resources 1 (main DEL) from Request for Resources 2 (Local Government DEL) made up from £1,625,000 to the strategic research budget (main DEL) and £533,000 to DCLG’s communication budget (main DEL). Both of these changes are to enable more effective management of the budgets.
2.2 An increase in main DEL of £700,000 in respect of Infrastructure UK. This is a technical correction.
2.3 A surrender of £46,191,000 programme expenditure to HM Treasury made up of £16,160,000 internal savings and £30,031,000 to reflect technical changes under the clear line of sight project (CLOS) which were overlooked when CLOS was first set up.
2.4 A net transfer of £140,000 to other Government Departments, made up of:
Amount (£) | Department | Reason |
|---|---|---|
£1,980,000 | Culture Media and Sport | Contributions to the Migration Impact Fund |
£4,340,000 | Home Office | |
£1,980,000 | Health | |
£290,000 | Cabinet Office | Transfer of work on Community Cohesion |
Transfers out (Programme total £8,730,000) | ||
£2,500,000 | Energy and Climate Change | Local Carbon Frameworks |
£4,280,000 | Business Innovation and Skills | Migration Impact Fund |
£100,000 | Cabinet Office | Cross Government funding of Information Assurance capabilities. |
£1,850,000 | Foreign and Commonwealth Office | Papal visit |
2.5 a net increase in receipts of £23,837,000. This is made up of increases in provision of:
£100,000 for the dividend payment from the Fire Service College;
£7,020,000 in respect of Firelink projects in Scotland and Wales;
£5,160,000 increase in dividend receipts for Ordnance Survey;
£1,883,000 for staff on loan to the Homes and Communities Agency and outward secondment (administration budget);
£21,833,000 administration for Government Office programmes (administration budget);
offset by decreases in provision of:
£159,000 decrease in dividends for Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre
£12,000,000 to reflect reduced income from sub-tenants following departure from Ashdown House (administration budget).
2.6 a net transfer of £3,336,000 programme provision from non-voted to voted made up as follows:
from voted to non-voted provision
£2,316,000 was surrendered to the departmental unallocated provision (DUP) in respect of savings identified in the review of Pilots projects;
£2,100,000 of departmental receipts to the Homes and Communities Agency to fund additional pension costs. The additional funding is required to meet liabilities which had not been fully costed when the body was first set up;
£100,000 from fire and rescue services improvement programme (a dividend payment from the Fire Service College) is being transferred to DUP;
from non-voted to voted provision
£1,500,000 from the Homes and Communities Agency Growth due to withdrawal of funding in support of eco-towns.
£6,352,000 from DUP to help restore the European regional development fund (ERDF) liability budget to its original total. (The budget was reduced by £17.1 million at main estimates as a temporary measure while the budgets to deliver administrative savings which contributed to the £6.2 billion savings were identified.
2.7 The changes described at paragraphs 2.5 and 2.6 above have a net nil effect on the departmental expenditure limit:
2.8 The change in the administration budget arises from the transfer of £290,000 from the Cabinet Office—see above table at 2.4.
3. The change in the capital element of the DEL arises from:
3.1 a surrender of £70,029,000 programme expenditure to HM Treasury made up of:
£14,629,000 internal savings; and
£55,400,000 as the borrowing element in respect of local authority new build programmes.
3.2 an increase in receipts of £19,500,000 for capital pooled housing receipts offsetting increases in provision of £5,189,000 for the Olympics programme; £13,277,000 for Control Room, £950,000 for Thames Gateway and £84,000 for renewing neighbourhood programme.
3.3 a net transfer of £2,624,000 from non-voted to voted made up of:
from voted to non-voted provision
£2,340,000 to the community infrastructure fund to support the Dearne Valley transport project to be delivered by Barnsley metropolitan borough council;
£950,000 to Thames Gateway to enable the London Urban Development Council to meet pressures on the additional compulsory purchase order valuation.
from non-voted to voted provision
A surplus on local authority supported capital expenditure (LASCE) of £5,914,000 is being moved to private sector renewal to restore an earlier reduction in their 2010-11 allocation.
3.4 The changes described at paragraphs 3.2 and 3.3 above have a net nil effect on the departmental expenditure limit:
Section 2: Local Government DEL
4. The Department for Communities and Local Government’s local government DEL will be decreased by £2,374,000 from £25,992,569,000 to £25,990,195,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Change | NEW DEL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
Resource | -2,158 | -182 | 25,863,046 | 115,353 | 25,978,399 |
Capital 1 | 0 | 182 | 12,470 | 582 | 13,052 |
Depreciation 2 | 0 | -216 | 0 | -1,256 | -1,256 |
Total | -2,158 | -216 | 25,875,516 | 114,679 | 25,990,195 |
1 Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets 2 Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL, since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
5. The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
the transfer of £2,158,000 from Request for Resources 2 (local government DEL) to Request for Resources 1 (main DEL) described at paragraph 2.1 above
a switch of £182,000 from resource to capital. Local Government Standards Board’s capital allocation was taken out in the last budget reduction. It was necessary to transfer this fund from resource to capital to cover the spending to date.
6. The change in the capital element of the DEL arises from
the switch of £182,000 to Capital from Resource for Local Government Standards Board described above.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Subject to parliamentary approval, the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased by £39,700,000 from £1,957,263,000 to £1,996,963,000 and the administration budget will increase by £7,200,000 from £44,288,000 to £51,488,000. Within the DEL change the impact on resource and capital are set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 4,396 | 5,244 | 90,863 | 1,460,220 | 1,551,083 |
Ofwhich: | |||||
Administration budget | 7,200 | - | 51,488 | - | 51,488 |
Capital1 | 11,901 | 18,159 | -643,406 | 1,217,392 | 573,986 |
Less Depreciation2 | - | - | -7,500 | -120,606 | -128,106 |
Total | 16,297 | 23,403 | -560,043 | 2,557,006 | 1,996,963 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the Resource element of the DEL arises from:
Take up of £9,700,000 End Year flexibility comprising: (£4,000,000) UK Film; (£2,000,000) Museums and Galleries; and £3,700,000 Administration budget, and a transfer of £60,000 from Resource to Capital DEL for the Poetry Archive
The administration budget has increased by £7,200,000 from £44,288,000 to £51,488,000. This is as a result of take up of £3,700,000 Administration End Year Flexibility and an agreed transfer of £3,500,000 from programme to administration costs.
The Capital element of the DEL has increased by £30,060,000 as a result of:
The drawdown of £30,000,000 End Year Flexibility (EYF) to meet agreed spending plans and a transfer of £60,000 to Capital from Resource DEL for the Poetry Archive.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Ministry of Defence departmental expenditure limits (DEL) will be increased by £102,744,000 (Voted and Non Voted) from £37,219,510,000 to £37,322,254,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on Resources and Capital are as set out in the following table:
Change | New DEL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voted | Non-Voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
Resource | 102,744 | - | 35,454,550 | 603,460 | 36,058,010 |
Ofwhich:AdministrationBudget | - | - | 2,182,586 | - | 2,182,586 |
Capital | - | - | 10,070,208 | 851 | 10,071,059 |
Depreciation1 | - | - | -8,797,259 | -9,556 | -8,806,815 |
Total | 102,744 | - | 36,727,499 | 594,755 | 37,322,254 |
1 Depreciation, which forms part of Resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The changes to the resource and capital elements of the DEL arise from:
Voted Resource DEL increase £102,744,000:
RfRl:
(1) An increase of £88,000,000 in Resource DEL to bring it into line with the audited outturn for 2009-10, updating the provisional adjustment made at main estimate, as agreed with the Treasury from the reserve.
(2) To increase the net non budget grant funding of £1,289,000 by reducing Resource DEL by £28,000 for the Council of Reserve Forces and Cadets Association, £600,000 for the National Army Museum, £871,000 for the Royal Hospital Chelsea, and £315,000 for the Cadets and Sea Scouts Association; and, increasing Resource DEL by reducing the Royal Navy National Museum non budget grant of £525,000.
RfR2:
(1) A transfer in of £16,033,000 from the Department for International Development being their contribution to the conflict pool.
The changes to Resource DEL and Capital DEL will lead to an increased net cash requirement of £104,033,000.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Education (DfE) departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased by £580,339,000 from £57,318,757,000 to £57,899,096,000; the administration cost budget will increase by £1,500,000 from £180,503,000 to £182,003,000. The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED) which has a separate Estimate and DEL, will remain at £190,196,000 with the administration cost budget remaining at £27,337,000. The Office of Qualifications and Examination Regulation (OFQUAL) which has a separate Estimate and DEL, will remain at £23,400,000.
Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Change | New DEL | Of which: | Change | New DEL | Of which: | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | |||||
£'000 | £'000 | £'000 | £'000 | £'000 | £'000 | £'000 | £'000 | |
RfRI | 623,339 | 49,683,740 | 41,290,026 | 8,393,714 | -43,000 | 6,297,547 | 242,474 | 6,055,073 |
RfR2 | 0 | 1,602,784 | 1,602,784 | 0 | 0 | 315,025 | 315,025 | 0 |
DfE Total | 623,339 | 51,286,524 | 42,892,810 | 8,393,714 | -43,000 | 6,612,572 | 557,499 | 6,055,073 |
OFSTED | 0 | 190,196 | 185,852 | 4,344 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
OFQUAL | 0 | 17,900 | 17,300 | 600 | 0 | 5,500 | 5,500 | 0 |
Sub Total | 623,339 | 51,494,620 | 43,095,962 | 8,398,658 | -43,000 | 6,618,072 | 562,999 | 6,055,073 |
Of which Admin Budget | 1,500 | 209,340 | 204,872 | 4,468 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Depreciation11 | -1,500 | -17,137 | -14,107 | -3,030 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Total | 621,839 | 51,477,483 | 43,081,855 | 8,395,628 | -43,000 | 6,618,072 | 562,999 | 6,055,073 |
1Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL, in the table above, since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. 2Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. |
Department for Education
Resource DEL
The increase in the resource element of the DEL of £623,339,000 arises from a decrease in the voted element of the resource DEL of £9,089,000 and an increase of £632,428,000 in the non-voted element of resource DEL, mainly in the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
Voted Resource DEL
The £9,089,000 decrease in the voted element of the resource DEL arises from:
RFR1
A transfer from the Department for Work and Pensions for £4,183,000 in respect of their agreed share of the costs associated with the Child Poverty Innovation fund.
A transfer from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills of £20,000,000 in respect of Higher Discretionary Support for 19 to 24 year olds.
A Machinery of Government transfer to the Ministry of Justice of £43,811,000 in respect of the Joint Youth Justice Unit. This was a joint project between the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice. Responsibility for this has been moved entirely to the Ministry of Justice.
A transfer to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of £1,850,000 to cover the Departments’ contribution to the educational objective of the jointly funded Papal Visit.
A transfer from Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills of £1,990,000 in respect of National Vocational Qualifications income received by QCDA that fund UK Commission for Employment and Skills expenditure.
A transfer to the Department for Communities and Local Government of £1,980,000 for the Migration Impact Fund.
A transfer to the Scottish Government of £213,000 for Child Trust Funds top ups.
A switch of £33,000,000 from Capital Grants to Resource spending for Schools and Teachers to re-profile budgets affected as part of the Department's 2010 Emergency Budget savings of £670 million.
Take up of Departmental End Year Flexibility of £606,000,000 to increase provision for Sixth Forms delivered through the Young People’s Learning Agency.
A movement of £626,928,000 to non-voted resource DEL to support the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
A movement of £4,500,000 from Non Voted spending to re-profile provision usage no longer required and relieve pressures on the depreciation budgets caused by the recent Clear Line of Sight adjustments.
Non-voted resource DEL
The £632,428,000 increase in Non-voted resource DEL arises from:
RFR1
A movement of £10,000,000 from non-voted Capital switched to resource to re-profile budgets affected as part of the Department's 2010 Emergency Budget savings of £670 million.
A movement of £626,928,000 from voted resource to support the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies.
A movement of £4,500,000 from non-voted resource DEL to support the Department’s Administration expenditure.
Capital DEL
The decrease in the capital element of the DEL of £43,000,000 arises from a decrease in the non-voted element of capital DEL.
Non-voted Capital DEL
The £43,000,000 decrease in the non-voted element of capital DEL arises from:
A switch of £43,000,000 from non-voted capital into voted and non-voted resource
to re-profile budgets affected as part of the Department’s 2010 Emergency Budget savings of £670 million.
Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills
There has been no change in overall DEL limits within the winter supplementary.
Office of Qualifications and Examination Regulation
There has been no change in overall DEL limits within the winter supplementary.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Chris Huhne)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Department of Energy and Climate Change departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will increase by £650,000 from £3,111,948,000 to £3,112,598,000.
Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-Voted | Voted | Non-Voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 943,776 | -924,801 | 407,198 | 810,364 | 1,217,562 |
Of which: | |||||
Administration Budget | - | - | 108,084 | - | 108,084 |
Capital DEL1 | 3,262 | -21,587 | 725,519 | 1,178,182 | 1,903,701 |
Less Depreciation2 | - | - | -2,987 | -5,678 | -8,665 |
Total DEL | 947,038 | -946,388 | 1,129,730 | 1,982,868 | 3,112,598 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of Resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL in the table above, since Capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
Resource DEL
The increase in the Resource element of the DEL of £18,975,000 arises from an increase in the voted element of Resource DEL of £943,776,000 offset by a decrease of £924,801,000 in the non-voted element of Resource DEL.
Voted Resource DEL
The £943,776,000 increase in the voted element of Resource DEL arises from:
A decrease of £923,000,000 in Nuclear Decommissioning Authority operating appropriations-in-aid.
A transfer from non-voted Capital DEL of £18,325,000, reflecting the revision of the Capital/Resource split of the £85 million DECC contribution to the £6.2 billion savings announced on 24 May 2010.
A transfer from non-voted Resource DEL of £1,801,000.
A transfer from the Department for Communities and Local Government of £2,500,000 for Low-Carbon Framework pilot programmes.
A transfer to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of £1,850,000 towards the costs of the Papal visit.
Non-voted Resource DEL
The £924,801,000 decrease in non-voted Resource DEL arises from:
A decrease of £923,000,000 in Nuclear Decommissioning Authority DEL reflecting the revised scoring of their income as non-voted in DEL terms, offsetting the reduction in appropriations-in-aid.
A transfer to voted Resource DEL of £1,801,000.
Capital DEL
The decrease in the Capital element of the DEL of £18,325,000 arises from an increase in the voted element of Capital DEL of £3,262,000 and a decrease of £21,587,000 in the non-voted element of Capital DEL.
Voted Capital DEL
The £3,262,000 increase in the voted element of Capital DEL arises from:
A transfer from non-voted Capital DEL of £3,262,000.
Non-voted Capital DEL
The £21,587,000 decrease in the non-voted element of Capital DEL arises from:
A transfer to voted Capital DEL of £3,262,000.
A transfer to voted Resource DEL of £18,325,000, reflecting the revision of the Capital/Resource split of the £85 million DECC contribution to the £6.2 billion savings announced on 24 May 2010.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be reduced by £218,000 (0.01%) from £2,417,291,000 to £2,417,073,000. The Administration Budget will be reduced by £662,000 (0.23%) from £282,750,000 to £282,088,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital is set out in the following table:
Change | New DEL | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voted | Non-voted | Total | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
Resource | 12,345 | -12,563 | -218 | 3,707,615 | -1,290,542 | 2,417,073 |
Of which: | ||||||
Administration Budget | -662 | - | -662 | 282,088 | - | 282,088 |
Capital | -17,763 | 17,763 | - | 123,127 | 424,587 | 547,714 |
Depreciation1 | 325 | -325 | - | -100,441 | -109,235 | -209,676 |
Total | -5,093 | 4,875 | -218 | 3,730,301 | -975,190 | 2,755,111 |
1Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the resource element of the DEL of -£218,000 arises from:
(i) a transfer of £1,850,000 administration to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the Papal visit; (ii) a transfer of £1,188,000 administration and £544,000 programme to DEFRA from the Food Standards Agency for the Machinery of Government Change reflecting a permanent transfer of function to DEFRA covering elements of food labelling and food composition policy; and (iii) a transfer of £100,000 programme to the Scottish Executive to fund Marine Protected Areas.
There has also been a transfer within the resource element of the DEL of £12,563,000 from non-voted to voted: (i) £9,447,000 relating to budget transfers from the core Department (voted) to the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies (non-voted), mainly the Environment Agency, the Joint Nature and Conservation Committee and Natural England; and (ii) £22,010,000 relates to increases in income and expenditure for the Rural Development Programme for England. This change is DEL neutral, but the expenditure is classed as voted, whereas the income is classed as non-voted consolidated fund extra receipts.
There is no change in the depreciation budget. There has however been a transfer of £325,000 from voted to non-voted relating to a transfer of budget to the Marine Management Organisation.
There is no change in the capital element of the DEL. There has however been a transfer within the capital element of the DEL of £17,763,000 from voted to non-voted relating to budget transfers from the core Department (voted) to the Department's Non Departmental Public Bodies (non-voted), mainly the Environment Agency.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
Subject to parliamentary approval of any necessary supplementary estimate, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be increased by £95,878,000 from £2,127,148,000 to £2,223,026,000. The administration budget will be increased by £64,250,000 from £420,448,000 to £484,698,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource | 138,143 | -17,000 | 2,124,381 | 29,000 | 2,153,381 |
Of which: | |||||
Administration budget | 81,250 | -17,000 | 468,068 | 16,630 | 484,698 |
Capital1 | -25,265 | - | 168,695 | - | 168,695 |
Depreciation2 | - | - | -99,050 | - | -99,050 |
Total | 112,878 | -17,,000 | 2,194,026 | 29,000 | 2,223,026 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the resource element of the DEL arises from:
Request for Resources 1
Administration
I. Take up of £15,000,000 Administration EYF in respect of modernisation of the core FCO.
II. A claim on the Reserve of £15,000,000 Administration costs in respect of Corporate Services modernisation.
III. Transfer of £1,850,000 administration from the Department for Education in respect of the Papal visit.
IV. Transfer of £1,850,000 administration from the Department for International Development in respect of the Papal visit.
V. Transfer of £1,850,000 administration from the Department of Energy and Climate Change in respect of the Papal visit.
VI. Transfer of £1,850,000 administration from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in respect of the Papal visit.
VII. Transfer of £1,850,000 administration from the Department for Communities and Local Government in respect of the Papal visit.
VIII. Transfer of £180,000 administration from the Department for International Development in respect of the gratis visa operation in Chernobyl.
IX. Capital to Administration switch of £25,000,000 in respect of exchange rate pressures.
Programme
I. Transfer of £100,000 programme from the Department for International Development in respect of the Strategic and Bilateral fund work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
II. Transfer of £40,000,000 programme from the Department for International Development in respect of support for British Council Official Development Assistance (ODA).
III. Transfer of £200,000 programme from the Department of International Development in respect of Tanzania Police Training Project.
Capital
I. Capital to administration switch of £25,000,000 in respect of exchange rate pressures.
II. Capital transfer of £265,000 from FCO to DFID as a contribution towards building a new office in Juba, Sudan.
Request for Resources 2
Programme
I. Transfer of £16,467,000 grants from DFID in respect of conflict prevention and discretionary Peacekeeping funds.
II. Transfer of £54,000 grants to the Security Intelligence Agencies for expansion and capability.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
Subject to the necessary supplementary estimates, the Department of Health’s element of the departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will increase by £20,860,000 from £106,260,372,000 to £106,281,232,000 the Administration Cost Limit has increased by £4,201,000 from £211,079,000 to £215,280,000. The Food Standards Agency DEL decreases by £16,059,000 from £130,989,000 to £114,930,000. The Administration Cost Limit will reduce by £5,389,000 from £56,299,000 to £50,910,000. The overall DEL including the Food Standards Agency will increase by £4,801,000 from £106,391,361,000 to £106,396,162,000. The impact on resource and capital are set out in the following table:
Voted £m | Non-voted £m | Voted £m | Non-voted £m | Total £m | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Department of Health | |||||
Resource DEL, of which | 467.860 | -447.000 | 101,141.041 | 243.339 | 101,384.380 |
Administration Budget | 4.201 | - | 210.280 | 5.000 | 215.280 |
Capital DEL1 | - | 0 | 2,150.189 | 2,746.663 | 4,896.852 |
Total Department of Health DEL | 467.860 | -447.000 | 103,291.230 | 2,990.002 | 106,281.232 |
Depreciation2 | - | - | -1,119.419 | 0 | -1,119.419 |
Total Department of Health spending (after adjustment) | 467.860 | -447.000 | 102,171.811 | 2,990.002 | 105,161.813 |
Food Standards Agency | |||||
Resource DEL, of which | -16.059 | - | 114.329 | - | 114.329 |
Administration Budget | -5.389 | - | 50.910 | - | 50.910 |
Capital DEL1 | - | - | 0.601 | - | 0.601 |
Total Food Standards Agency DEL | -16.059 | 114.930 | - | 114.930 | |
Depreciation2 | - | - | -1.861 | - | -1.861 |
Total Food Standards Agency spending (after adjustment) | -16.059 | - | 113.069 | - | 113.069 |
1Capital DEL includes items treated as Resource in Estimates and accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2Depreciation, which forms part of resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL since the capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
The Department of Health DEL has increased by £20,860,000 made up of:
an increase of £14,327,000 (£4,201,000 administration costs) as a result of a Machinery of Government change with nutrition policy moving from the Food Standards Agency;
a transfer of £10,513,000 from the Ministry of Justice mainly for prison healthcare services;
a transfer of -£2,000,000 to the Cabinet Office as the Department’s share of a contribution to information assurance strategy; and
a transfer of -£1,980,000 to the Department of Communities and Local Government towards the migrant impact fund.
The Department of Health’s administration cost limit has increased as a result of the Machinery of Government change detailed above.
The change of £16,059,000 to the Food Standards Agency element of the DEL is due to:
a reduction in DEL of £14,327,000 (£4,201,000 administration costs) for the transfer of nutrition responsibilities to the Department of Health. It was announced on the 20 July the Department of Health would become responsible for nutrition policy in England; and
a reduction in DEL of £1,732,000 (£1,188,000 administration costs) for the transfer of labelling responsibilities. It was announced on the 20 July that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will become responsible for country of origin labelling and various other types of labelling not related to food safety, and food composition policies in England.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for International Development’s departmental expenditure limit (DEL) will be reduced by £74,465,000 from £7,618,569,000 to £7,544,104,000.
Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are as set out in the following table:
Voted | Non-voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 6,642 | -81,372 | 5,023,211 | 985,628 | 6,008,839 |
Of which: | |||||
Administration budget | - | - | 154,644 | 3,000 | 157,644 |
Capital DEL 1 | 203,001 | -202,736 | 1,737,001 | -180,736 | 1,556,265 |
Less Depreciation 2 | - | - | -21,000 | - | -21,000 |
Total DEL | 209,643 | -284,108 | 6,739,212 | 804,892 | 7,544,104 |
1 Capital DEL includes items treated as resource in Estimates and Accounts but which are treated as Capital DEL in budgets. 2 Depreciation, which forms part of the resource DEL, is excluded from the total DEL, since capital DEL includes capital spending and to include depreciation of these assets would lead to double counting. |
The change in the Resource element of DEL arises from:
Non-voted
Transfers out to other Government Departments -£74,730,000:
-£40,000,000 transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of support for British Council Official Development Assistance (ODA).
-£16,467,000 transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of the conflict prevention pool.
-£16,033,000 transferred to the Ministry of Defence in respect of the conflict prevention pool.
-£1,850,000 transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of the papal visit.
-£200,000 transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of police training in Tanzania.
-£180,000 transferred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of visas for Chernobyl victims.
Use of Departmental Unallocated Provision | -£6,642,000 |
Subtotal non voted | -£81,372,000 |
Voted | |
Use of Departmental Unallocated Provision | £6,642,000 |
Subtotal voted | £6,642,000 |
Total reductions in RDEL | -£74,730,000 |
The change in the Capital element of DEL arises from:
Non-voted
Transfers in from other Government Departments £265,000
£265,000 transferred from Foreign and Commonwealth Office in respect of the new Juba office build.
Income from Global Trade Liquidity loan to be paid into the Consolidated Fund (CFER) since it exceeds voted capital expenditure -£200,000,000
Use of Departmental Unallocated Provision | -£3,001,000 |
Subtotal non-voted | -£202,736,000 |
Voted | |
IDA replenishment on resource side of the Estimate | £200,000,000 |
Use of Departmental Unallocated Provision | £3,001,000 |
Subtotal voted | £203,001,000 |
Total increases in CDEL | £265,000 |
Serious Further Offence Review (Jon Venables)
(14 years ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
Following the recall to custody and subsequent conviction of Jon Venables for the possession of indecent images of children, I commissioned Sir David Omand GCB to undertake an independent review of the post-release period of the case, covering Jon Venables’ supervision from release on life licence in June 2001 until 24 February 2010, when he was recalled to custody.
The review has encompassed the general principles of a serious further offence (SFO) review but has also considered the wider lessons to be learnt for the future management of this and similar cases.
The terms of reference of the review were:
to review the supervision of the subject, from his release on life licence until his recall to custody, in order to establish whether he was effectively supervised, having regard to national standards and guidance and to the particular circumstances/challenges of his case;
in doing so, to consider the actions of his offender managers, their supervisors, the local police, the local MAPPA meetings and the role of the National Management Board; and
to establish whether everything was done which might reasonably have been expected of all agencies involved in supervising the subject to monitor his compliance with his licence conditions and to assess and manage any risk of harm which he presented.
Sir David Omand has completed the review and submitted his report to me.
I have placed in the Libraries of both Houses a copy of his report, which has been redacted in a few places to comply with the terms of the injunction amended in the High Court on 23 July 2010 (commonly known as the Butler-Sloss injunction), to take account of data protection and other confidentiality laws and to protect very sensitive operational policing information.
Sir David has concluded that Jon Venables was effectively and properly supervised at an appropriate level and frequency of contact, having regard to the particular circumstances of his case. Sir David also concludes that no reasonable supervisory regime would have been expected to detect his use of the computer to download indecent images.
I have accepted the review’s recommendations, which will be taken forward by officials in the National Offender Management Service. Officials will provide me with an update on the implementation of the recommendations in due course.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)
Subject to parliamentary approval the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) will be taking a 2010-11 winter supplementary estimate. The effect this will have is to decrease the NIO’s Total DEL (excluding depreciation) by £1,169,047,000 from £1,203,205,000 to £34,158,000.
£’000 | Voted | Non-Voted | Voted | Non-voted | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource | (293,444) | (869,832) | 34,174 | 1,702 | 35,876 |
Admin Budget | (51,813) | 16,751 | - | 16,751 | |
Capital | (35,387) | (36,076) | 440 | - | 440 |
Depreciation | 24,797 | 40,895 | (2,100) | (58) | (2,158) |
Total (excl. depreciation) | (304,034) | (865,013) | 32,514 | 1,644 | 34,158 |
The change in total DEL of £1,169,047,000 relates to the devolution of policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Executive on 12 April 2010.
NI Consolidated Fund—Request for Resources (RfR) 2
The Northern Ireland Executive DEL is increased by £1,310,609,000 from
£9,515,937,000 to £10,826,546,000. Within the total DEL change, the impact on resources and capital is set out in the following table:
Change £000 | New DEL £000 | |
|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 1,307,846 | 9,931,705 |
Capital DEL | 80,263 | 1,222,906 |
Resource DEL + Capital DEL | 1,388,109 | 11,154,611 |
Less Depreciation | 77,500 | 328,065 |
Total DEL net of depreciation | 1,310,609 | 10,826,546 |
This increase takes account of the Machinery of Government change that devolved policing and justice from the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Courts Service to the Northern Ireland Executive on 12 April 2010.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimates, the departmental expenditure limit (DEL) for Scottish Government will be increased by £302,413,000 from £28,401,374,000 to £28,703,787,000. Within the total DEL change, the impact on resources and capital is set out in the following table:
£’000 | Change | New DEL |
|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 158,993 | 25,857,454 |
Of which: | ||
Non Ring-Fenced | 125,993 | 25,243,842 |
Capital DEL | 149,621 | 3,388,567 |
Resource DEL + Capital DEL | 308,614 | 29,246,021 |
Less Depreciation | 6,201 | 542,234 |
Total DEL | 302,413 | 28,703,787 |
DEL provision for the Scotland Office will remain unchanged.
The increase in the Scotland DEL takes account of the following adjustments to the Scottish Government provision:
the take-up of end-year flexibility (EYF) by the Scottish Government amounting
to £302,621,000 (including £6,201,000 for depreciation and impairments);
Clear Line Of Sight classification changes—student loans of £4,500,000.
The DEL increase also includes the following changes:
a transfer of £1,180,000 from the Home Office in respect of the migration impact fund;
a transfer of £100,000 from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to Marine Scotland in respect of marine protected areas;
a transfer of £213,000 from the Department for Children, Schools and Families in
respect of the Child Trust Fund.
ANNEX A
changes to del
Scotland Office DEL
1. The Scotland Office DEL will remain unchanged.
Scotland DEL
1. Take-up of EYF by the Scottish Government of £302,621,000 (£153,000,000 near cash, £33,000,000 non-cash and £149,621,000 capital);
2. Clear Line Of Sight classification changes amounting to £4,500,000; and
3. Other transfers of £1,493,000 as follows:
a transfer of £1,180,000 from the Home Office in respect of the migration impact fund;
a transfer of £100,000 from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to Marine Scotland in respect of marine protected areas;
a transfer of £213,000 from the Department for Children, Schools and Families in respect of the child trust fund.
4. In addition, provision for depreciation increases by £6,201,000.
5. Within the total DEL change, the impact on resources and capital is set out in the following table:
£’000 | Change | New DEL |
|---|---|---|
Resource DEL | 158,993 | 25,857,454 |
Of which: | ||
Non Ring-Fenced | 125,993 | 25,243,842 |
Capital DEL | 149,621 | 3,388,567 |
Resource DEL + Capital DEL | 308,614 | 29,246,021 |
Less Depreciation/Impairments | 6,201 | 542,234 |
Total DEL | 302,413 | 28,703,787 |
changes to ame
1. An increase in provision of £2,686,000 for NHS pensions (Scotland);
2. An increase in provision of £40,293,000 for teachers pensions (Scotland);
3. An increase in provision of £20,000,000 for NHS impairments;
4. A reduction in provision of £5,258,000 for student loans; and
5. A reduction in provision of £4,500,000 for Clear Line Of Sight classification changes—student loans.
changes to non budget
1. A reduction of £177,737,000 for changes in cash to accrual adjustments.
There is an increase in the grant payable to the Scottish Consolidated Fund of £539,572,000 from £26,609,096,000 to £27,148,668,000.
Departmental Expenditure Limits
(14 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary supplementary estimate, the Department for Work and Pensions Resource departmental expenditure limit will decrease by £35,781,000 to £8,730,218,000 and the Capital departmental expenditure limit will remain unchanged at £243,052,000. The Administration budget will decrease by £31,185,000 to £6,076,705,000.
Voted | Non-voted | Total | Voted | Non-voted | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Resource | -58,183 | 22,402 | -35,781 | 5,599,225 | 3,130,993 | 8,730,218 |
of which: | ||||||
Administration | -31,185 | 0 | -31,185 | 4,543,556 | 1,533,149 | 6,076,705 |
Capital | 18,496 | -18,496 | 0 | 191,224 | 51,828 | 243,052 |
Depreciation1 | 919 | -1,018 | -99 | -254,880 | -834 | -255,714 |
Total DEL | -40,606 | 4,924 | -35,682 | 5,535,569 | 3,181,987 | 8,717,556 |
1Depreciation, which forms part of the resource Departmental Expenditure Limit, is excluded from the total Departmental Expenditure Limit since the capital Departmental Expenditure Limit includes capital spending and to include depreciation of those assets would lead to double counting. |
Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit
The change in the resource element of the departmental expenditure limit arises from:
Movements in Voted Expenditure
Request for Resources 2
i. A budget transfer of £4,183,000 to the Department for Education to meet the Department’s agreed share of the costs associated with the Child Poverty Innovation fund for 2010-11.
ii. A budget transfer of £413,000 to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for Regional Development Agency payments in relation to the School Gates project.
Request for Resources 3
iii. A budget transfer of £1,200,000 to the Paydays and Periodicity for Pension benefits. Small up-front cost of £ 1.2 million required to be transferred to Non-voted AME.
iv. A transfer from Request for Resources 5 of £1,000,000 to cover the costs of Information Assurance for 2010-11.
v. A budget transfer of £1,000,000 to the Cabinet Office for the Department’s contribution to Information Assurance for 2010-11.
Request for Resources 5
vi. A Machinery of Government change of £28,985,000 to the Cabinet Office. This is to bring together and consolidate in the Cabinet Office all the various strands of work on transparency, open data, Government websites and digital engagement.
vii. A transfer to Request for Resources 3 of £1,000,000 to cover the costs of Information Assurance for 2010-11.
Movements in Non-Voted Expenditure
viii. A decrease in non-voted expenditure of £16,000 offset by an increase in voted expenditure of £16,000 relating to decreased spend of the Independent Living Fund.
ix. A decrease in non-voted expenditure of £14,495,000 offset by an increase in voted expenditure of £14,495,000 relating to decreased spend of the Pensions Regulator.
x. A decrease in non-voted expenditure of £226,000 offset by an increase in voted expenditure of £226,000 relating to decreased spend of the Pensions Advisory Service.
xi. A decrease in non-voted expenditure of £75,000 offset by an increase in voted expenditure of £75,000 relating to decreased spend of the Office of the Pensions Ombudsman.
xii. An increase in non-voted expenditure of £37,214,000 offset by an increase in voted income of £37,214,000 relating to the increase of income for administering National Insurance Benefits.
Capital Departmental Expenditure Limit
The net nil movement in the capital element of the Departmental Expenditure Limit arises from:
Movements in Non-Voted Expenditure
xiii. A decrease in non-voted capital expenditure of £18,508,000 offset by an increase in voted capital expenditure of £18,508,000 relating to decreased spend of the Pensions Regulator.
xiv. An increase in non-voted capital expenditure of £12,000 offset by an decrease in voted capital expenditure of £12,000 relating to increased spend of the Pensions Advisory Service.
Administration Costs
The movement in the Administration Cost limit arises from the changes to the Resource Departmental Expenditure Limit as noted in items iii to vii.
Active at 60 (Community Agents)
(14 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
Today, I am pleased to announce that the Government are providing £1 million to help older people keep active and make the most of their later lives. This money is available for local community groups or organisations within 30 selected areas1 to bid for small grants of between £250 and £3,000.
Each local community group within the selected areas will recruit at least one Active at 60 Community Agent who will volunteer their time to help motivate, encourage and organise people within their own communities to become more active, physically, socially and mentally. Active at 60 Community Agents will be from the communities they are helping, and will have the flexibility to design innovative ways of encouraging and inspiring activity to help improve people’s later lives.
Through the Active at 60 Community Agent initiative those people who are more at risk of social isolation in their later lives will be supported in becoming more active, independent and positively engaged with society. Active at 60 Community Agents will help people within their communities:
take the first step in trying something new
understand the benefits they can get from being more active, engaged and contributing to their communities
build social contacts to help make being active part of their routine
This project is part of the Government’s ambition to build a big society in which power is transferred from Whitehall to local communities, and organisations and voluntary groups play a far greater role in their community.
1 The following areas have been selected on the basis of level of deprivation and age structure, while ensuring a broad split across the English regions, encompassing both rural and urban areas:
Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Hackney, Sandwell, Kingston Upon Hull, Nottingham, Bournemouth, Southend-on-Sea, Brighton and Hove, Redcar and Cleveland, Wirral, Doncaster, Cornwall and The Isles of Scilly, East Sussex, Norfolk, Herefordshire, County of Lincolnshire, Enfield, Knowsley, Blackpool, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Salford, Hartlepool, Tower Hamlets, Wolverhampton, South Tyneside, Rochdale, Sunderland.
Work Capability Assessment
(14 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Government are pleased to announce the publication of Professor Malcolm Harrington’s independent review of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). This is a substantial and thorough review of the WCA which the Government fully endorse. Alongside the review, the Government are publishing their response which sets out how we will implement the review’s recommendations.
A central part of the Government’s plans to reform the welfare state involves action to tackle incapacity benefit dependency. More than 2.2 million people in Britain today are on incapacity benefits and many have been abandoned, with little or no contact from the welfare state for as long as a decade or more.
Through the WCA we seek to change this, and to try to find a better way forward for those people. From April 2011 we will put 1.6 million people, all of those on incapacity benefits who are not close to retirement, through an independent medical assessment, the WCA. Those found fit for work or with the potential to return to work will be given support to help them do so, those who are deemed unable to work will continue to receive full support.
We believe that the principles of the WCA are right but we are clear that the process of assessment must be fair and honest about people’s potential. We do not wish to see people who are genuinely unable to work put in a position where they are expected to do so.
Professor Harrington’s review sets out how we can refine the system and significantly improve the process so that it continues to be fit for purpose. We intend to implement these changes as quickly as possible. Many will be put in place in time for the first assessments from the national migration in April 2011.
We will continue to review the WCA and to make further changes where necessary. We have invited Professor Harrington to continue in his current role as independent reviewer for another year and to make further recommendations to us as appropriate.
Copies of both documents are available in the Vote Office.
House of Lords
Health: Hydrotherapy
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have commissioned any research into the benefits of hydrotherapy for people with progressive conditions.
Baroness Northover
The health technology assessment programme has published research on the effectiveness of hydrotherapy for lower-limb osteoarthritis and for juvenile idiopathic arthritis.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
I thank my noble friend for that Answer, which seemed rather brief and limited in its scope. I would like the Minister's advice about how those concerned with this question could persuade the National Health Service of the benefits of ongoing hydrotherapy for people with progressive conditions who will never fulfil the criterion of a positive outcome that one might have with a broken leg. I am thinking in particular of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The sad truth is that hydrotherapy in this country is better known as a treatment for horses and dogs than for people.
Baroness Northover
Surely not. My noble friend has done a great deal herself to promote the potential psychological and physical benefits of hydrotherapy, and I am sure that she will continue to do so. Following her conversations with me over the past week or so, and at her request, I have sought for her and for other noble Lords with an interest in this area a meeting with the relevant Minister in the Department of Health, my honourable friend Anne Milton. That has been agreed and therefore I hope that the noble Baroness and others will be able to take this further forward.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Muscular Dystrophy last year carried out a major survey of facilities across the UK for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy—to which the noble Baroness referred—and discovered that boys with that very serious progressive disease who live in places like Newcastle, Oxford, London around Queen Square, and Oswestry, survive into their 30s and sometimes even their 40s, whereas in other parts of the UK they still die in their teens? There is evidence that in the rehabilitation of these patients, hydrotherapy plays an extremely important role. What efforts are the Government making to make certain that this form of treatment, which is invaluable, becomes more widely available across the United Kingdom?
Baroness Northover
My Lords, I am well aware of the report in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walton. It is a most impressive report that had an effect on the then Government. We are doing our best to take that forward. One thing that struck me when I looked at the research in this area was its paucity. The Department of Health can do so much, but clinicians can do a lot more. It is worth bearing in mind that the use of hydrotherapy is a matter for clinical judgment. By and large, clinicians and patients must take this forward. Therefore, it is very important that clinicians undertake research with larger groups of patients than has been the case heretofore. Anything that the noble Lord can do to promote that would be extremely welcome.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I say to the Minister that this is also a matter of resources. Is she aware of the potential benefits of hydrotherapy for people with long-term conditions, such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis? How will she ensure that hydrotherapy treatment is both continued and expanded for key groups when funding is transferred from PCTs to GPs, and how will the Government support GPs in the effective commissioning of these expensive rehabilitation and reablement treatments for people with these long-term and progressive conditions?
Baroness Northover
As the noble Baroness will recognise, the provision of this treatment up and down the country has been an ongoing problem. It is something that the previous Government tried to tackle, and the emphasis then, as now, was very much on local decision-making. However, the national commissioning board will be looking at the provision of specialised services and will try to ensure that, where there is this kind of need for a small group of patients, provision is catered for. At the moment, as the noble Baroness knows, the Department of Health is assessing the results of the consultation on the White Paper, which has just closed, and proposals on specialist commissioning will be brought forward. However, it is extremely important to recognise that this is not a new problem and it is not an outcome of the proposed changes.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, perhaps I may ask a very simple question. Are no steps to be taken until we have a report from various quarters? What is the position? We have heard a lot but I cannot understand what is to be done.
Baroness Northover
I apologise if I have not been clear, and I shall try to be clearer. PCTs currently commission locally for hydrotherapy. Physiotherapists decide whether their patients need hydrotherapy and, if they or clinicians recommend that that is what the patients need—and in many cases it is not advised because there could be infection, balance or other problems, so it is not ideal for all patients—the PCT commissions the treatment locally. That will continue to be the case, as it will under GP consortia but with the umbrella protection of ensuring with the commissioning board that specialist care is not squeezed out by an emphasis on what the majority need locally.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, as the Government are establishing an outcomes framework for the delivery of treatments, are they looking specifically to have a very flexible and alternative model for those with long-term conditions which takes account of the benefits in terms of both quality of life and welfare, and which also takes account of the avoidance of problems such as the earlier onset of contractures in those with neuromuscular disorders or neurological damage?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Baroness for that question as it enables me to point out, as she will know, that one element of the proposed NHS outcomes framework is enhancing the quality of life of people with long-term conditions. That is relevant here—it is not just a matter of seeing whether someone’s leg mends after it has been broken. I heard from my noble friend about the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and about the psychological benefit to her of having hydrotherapy. It is not simply a matter of physical benefit; there is also a psychological benefit.
Sport: Rugby League World Cup 2013
Lord Hoyle
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what financial contribution they will make to the Rugby Football League in respect of the Rugby League World Cup 2013.
Lord Hoyle
My Lords, I seek permission to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of Warrington Wolves Rugby League Club, winners of the Rugby League Cup at Wembley in 2009 and 2010.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, the Government are committed to staging the greatest sporting events in the world and the Rugby League World Cup is among them. The coalition agreement makes clear our commitment to the success of the Rugby League World Cup and we are working with the Rugby Football League to that end. Our proposals include financial underwriting comparable to that offered to the Rugby Football Union for its 2015 World Cup.
Lord Hoyle
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that constructive reply. Will the Government underwrite the Rugby League World Cup to the extent that it was underwritten by the regional development agencies under the previous Government; namely, to the sum of at least £1.5 million?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his expertise and his longstanding support for Rugby League, as he has already demonstrated to the House. He refers to a letter from my honourable friend Hugh Robertson. In fact, the Northwest Regional Development Agency contracted with the RFL to provide £1 million to support staging the event in exchange for a specified number of games taking place in its region. Due to the abolition of the RDAs, that position is under review. The RDAs have not yet operated their break clause, so the expectation is that at least £500,000 will be honoured, and potentially the full amount. That will be in addition to the Government’s offer of support. In the interests of brevity, I shall not go into the details of that at this stage.
Lord Prescott
My Lords, what is the thinking that justifies 40 times the amount of money for a Rugby Union Cup Final as opposed to a Rugby League Cup Final and World Cup Final? The RDAs were offering £1 million, but the Government are now abolishing them. Is not the reality that the noble Baroness belongs to a department that does not have an elected northern member in it, so reflecting the north-south issue, with, once again, disadvantage to the north?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. As the daughter of a Lancastrian and a Durham mother, I may possibly stand for the north, but that is perhaps a little far-fetched. The noble Lord mentions the difference between the two fees. The tournament fee for the Rugby Union World Cup was part of the commitment demanded in the bidding process, but there was no such tournament fee for the Rugby League World Cup. In the interest of fair treatment, the Government have said that the underwriting should be pro-rata, with a provision of up to £625,000 should the event not make the projected £2 million profit. That has been agreed with the Treasury and needs to be formally agreed by Parliament. The Rugby League Board is still considering the proposals made by the Government and we await its response, probably early in December.
Lord Mawhinney
My Lords, as regards world sporting events, I declare an interest as deputy chairman of England’s 28-team World Cup bid. I thank my noble friend and, through her, the coalition Government, for their willingness to support the guarantees which FIFA required and to which, in all fairness, the previous Government also signed up, to enable our bid to be made. I also thank the Prime Minister for the very active and personal support which he is giving to the bid, the decision on which will be made next week.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that very constructive and helpful question. I assure him that the Government remain fully behind England’s 2018 bid and will continue to support the bid in any way possible in the build up to FIFA’s decision on 2 December.
Baroness Billingham
My Lords, perhaps I may press the Minister further on this matter. We have listened with great interest to her thoughtful replies. Is there not a moral obligation here? We have a situation in which the Rugby League organised sponsorship of £1 million from the RDA and then the RDA is swept away and it is left without support. In those circumstances, I should have thought that the Government, as perpetrator of the sweeping-away, would immediately step in and say, “We will fully underwrite it”—not half of it. I think the Minister must take this back to the DCMS and press much more firmly for fair treatment for a very important sport.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, at the risk of incurring the wrath of noble Lords opposite, I repeat that we are not in such pleasant financial circumstances that we can honour all sorts of commitments across the board. The noble Baroness comes up again with the parity of treatment. We recognise that Rugby League and Rugby Union are two different codes of the sport. We are aware that they have some common interests and indeed they have swapped players, although not always highly successfully. The coalition agreement explicitly commits to parity to ensure that the 2013 Rugby League World Cup and the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup are successful.
Lord Addington
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that to say that it is a north-south divide is flying in the face of the work of the Rugby League, which has spent god knows how many years trying to penetrate the south to get a participation base? Should it not be encouraged to continue doing so and should not people be encouraged to get out of their laagers?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I thank my noble friend for that—in rather more robust language than I would have used. Indeed, Rugby League has a tremendous lot to commend it as a sport. It would be ideal if it could penetrate the south of the country as much as the north. It is a parallel sport, if you like, to Rugby Union, and both codes of the sport should be equally supported and have equal merit.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
Would the Minister confirm—I welcome this—that £25 million of underwriting is going into Rugby Union but that for Rugby League the amount is only £625,000, which is substantially less than the amount of money that it sought from the RDAs to put in its bid for the 2013 Rugby League World Cup? Will she say why there is such a wide variation? She used the phrase “parity of treatment”. Will she define what the parity of treatment is because, prima facie, it does not look like fair treatment, especially given that the £25 million underwriting for Rugby Union has not changed, yet that for Rugby League has?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Lord will be aware that the systems for putting in bids for Rugby Union and Rugby League are different and the government response is in proportion to the requirements for both those bids.
Lord Glentoran
Does my noble friend agree that sport across the kingdom and school sport are being seriously cut? Why are these large sums being put forward for very rich and popular sports?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, school sport funding is a debate for a different occasion. However, I assure noble Lords that this Government are fully committed to sport in schools.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I assure noble Lords that we are, and when the detail of the proposals that are being put forward for sport in schools comes out, I hope noble Lords will agree that there will be all sorts of opportunities for young people across the country to participate in competitive sport.
Immigration: Home Office Procedures
(14 years ago)
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Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will review the procedures and paperwork required by the Home Office from applicants for immigration or residential status.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)
My Lords, online forms containing guidance have already been introduced on the UK Border Agency website to make things easier for applicants. Next year, tier 4 student applicants, which comprise the largest category, will be able to create their own customer account to assist them to complete their online application, pay for it and view its progress. All immigration application forms will be available online by 2015, and the aim is to simplify and clarify application procedures in all categories.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that reply. My question relates to long-term residency in the UK, and I declare an interest in that I have had the right of abode for many years and have been here for 50 years. Why were new regulations introduced in 2006 requiring everyone to resubmit documents? In 1985 I had a letter saying that no repeat would ever be required, but in 2009 I was told that I must resubmit all originals. I am getting the same complaint from many people. Will the Minister also comment on the Canadian lady who, just this week, after 60 years in the UK, was stopped at the airport as an illegal immigrant?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, the aim of the 2006 regulations, which were brought into effect by our predecessors, appears to have been to cut down on fraudulent claims to the right of abode by ensuring that the validity of the certificate of entitlement which applicants have to have was limited to the lifetime of the passport to which it was attached. Requiring new certificates of entitlement enables a further check on the genuineness of the eligibility to take place. As regards the Canadian lady, on the basis of the press reports—and I have no other information—it would appear that this lady, who was allowed into the country, will be able to claim her right of citizenship through descent. I think that she will have no problem in doing that, and of course she will not have to pay.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, will my noble friend put copies of all the paperwork in the case of Anwar and Adjo in the Library, including the judgment of Lord Justice Sedley in which he said that “a shameful decision” had been made—the effective criminalising and enforced removal of an innocent person without either worthwhile evidence or the opportunity to answer? Lord Justice Sedley went on to request that the misuse of the powers of one of the great offices of state should be drawn to the attention of the Home Secretary. Has that been done, and what remedies is the Home Secretary providing for this misuse of powers?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I am afraid that I am not familiar with this case, which obviously the noble Lord is interested in, in detail. I will write to him.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, have the new Government amended the guidelines which the last Government gave to immigration officers instructing them to allow the second, third and fourth wives of Muslim men, together with their attendant children, to live in this country,
“even if that sets up a polygamous marriage in the United Kingdom”?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I am afraid that I am not familiar with that provision. I understand why the noble Lord is asking the question; I fear that I will have to look into the matter and perhaps write to him.
Lord Hylton
My Lords, as regards asylum applicants—which is a part of this larger question—is the noble Baroness aware that the UK borders authority operates a dispersal programme and system? Will she encourage it by all possible means also to disperse its centralised Croydon office to the regions so that applicants do not have to travel huge distances at great inconvenience for their principal interviews?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, is this in relation to passport applications? Is that the question the noble Lord is asking?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I will have to see what can be done. This seems rather distant from the original Question.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, can the noble Baroness answer this one? She will be aware that, a few months ago, the previous Government published a draft Bill on simplifying the immigration law. Contained within it was a proposal on information, to bring together piecemeal powers to require and supply information through specific gateways. Will the Government be taking that forward?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I am afraid that I do not know. You will have to wait and see.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I express an interest as a lawyer whose firm does a lot of immigration and asylum work, and I preface my question by saying that what I have to ask has no effect on the numbers coming in. As my noble friend the Minister will know, the previous Government tried their best to simplify the procedure for those applying for immigration and asylum and to move to a points-based system. The situation now, however, is that the questionnaire that applicants have to fill in is 60 pages of technical, concentrated stuff. If they get any aspect of it wrong, they fail. Legal aid is being withdrawn for asylum. Will my noble friend at least review the questionnaire process in order to simplify and clarify it?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, we should try to make these procedures as comprehensible, simple and clear as we can, consistent with having to acquire the correct information. We will see what we can do.
Abattoirs: CCTV
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will encourage or require the installation of closed circuit television cameras in abattoirs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, we recognise that CCTV can play a role in helping slaughterhouse operators monitor welfare and we welcome recent industry-led initiatives to install CCTV on a voluntary basis. We have no powers to require CCTV installation in abattoirs.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that half-helpful Answer. Has he seen the appalling CCTV images which have been put on to the internet by the charity Animal Aid, and does he agree with Tim Smith, chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, that they are,
“sickening … It doesn’t really matter how this footage was obtained or how it came into our presence”?
He went on to make it clear that what is important is that something should be done about it. Will the Minister join me in congratulating Morrisons on agreeing to install CCTV in the three abattoirs it owns and controls, including the Woodhead Bros abattoir, which is a major employer in the Lancashire town of Colne where I live.
Lord Henley
My Lords, obviously I offer my congratulations to Morrisons because we would encourage all owners of abattoirs to install CCTV if that is necessary. However, I stress to my noble friend that although I have not seen the film, we do not condone animal cruelty of any sort. We will ensure that all allegations of the ill treatment of animals are fully investigated and, where necessary, prosecutions are made.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, if that is so, should not those of us of the Christian culture, with our attendant laws for animal welfare, understand the practice of halal slaughter, and also be told when we may be eating that meat and therefore supporting the practice?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I believe that that is another Question, but I can say that we have no plans whatever to make the practice of halal or kosher killing illegal. However, we think that it is worth considering the appropriate labelling of all meat so that people know exactly what it is that they are eating and how the meat has been killed.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, given that Defra recently refused to prosecute practices which seemed to be contrary to the law on the grounds that the evidence had been illegally obtained, can the Minister inform the House how, without mandatory CCTV, slaughterhouse enforcement can be improved?
Lord Henley
My Lords, there are many factors other than compulsory CCTV; it is important to have vets working in all abattoirs and for inspections to take place at an appropriate level. I can assure my noble friend that any decision on whether to prosecute will be taken by independent prosecution lawyers; Ministers have no say in it. In the case that my noble friend refers to, the independent prosecution lawyer took into account previous court decisions which make it clear that evidence which has been unlawfully obtained cannot be used and will be excluded in such cases.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, given the alarming footage referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the disturbing report in the Independent last Friday, can we have an assurance that despite the decision made on court proceedings, not only will Defra’s commitment to animal welfare be reinforced rather than weakened, but the cuts imposed by the Department for Communities and Local Government will not impact on the ability of local authorities to carry out their important animal welfare role in monitoring abattoirs and markets?
Lord Henley
My Lords, of course they will not affect the role of local authorities in that regard. What is important is that Defra, through the Food Standards Agency, will continue to make sure that abattoirs are operating carefully, and we will make sure that appropriate funds are available for that. We are also going to consult on whether we should look to a full costs recovery scheme for the costs of monitoring what goes on in abattoirs, but obviously that is something which has to be discussed with the industry.
Lord Palmer
My Lords, given that the coalition Government have made it quite clear that the noble Lord’s department in particular wishes to cut red tape, insisting that every abattoir has CCTV would surely go against its principles.
Lord Henley
My Lords, we have no power to insist that every abattoir should have CCTV, and that will be made even clearer when the latest EU regulation, Regulation 1099/2009, comes into effect. We will continue to encourage all abattoirs to install CCTV, but that is only one method of ensuring that appropriate monitoring takes place. There are other tools that can be used.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate
My Lords, given the evidence that CCTV prevents and detects crime on the streets, can the Minister explain why the coalition intends to reduce coverage on the streets by CCTV?
Lord Henley
My Lords, that is a completely different question from the one on the Order Paper and has nothing whatever to do with slaughterhouses.
Lord Tebbit
Can my noble friend tell me whether the European Union has power to enforce CCTV in abattoirs?
Lord Henley
My Lords, my understanding is that the new regulation to which I referred—EU Regulation 1099/2009, which was agreed under the previous Government’s administration and came into force in 2009—constrains the use of national rules and would prohibit government action to require compulsory installation of CCTV in the future.
Lord Dykes
Can the Minister enlighten the House by saying how many prosecutions of abattoir operators there have been in the past five years?
Lord Henley
I cannot give a precise figure. However, I can assure my noble friend that there have been prosecutions since the current Government came into office.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, immediately after the debate on the second group of amendments on the Public Bodies Bill, my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones will repeat a Statement on controlling migration.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, in connection with the business of the day announcement which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has just made on the Statement on immigration, I bring to the attention of the House what we believe to be a serious matter in relation to the Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill and the role of your Lordships’ House as a revising Chamber. We understand that an announcement is to be made shortly on this Bill, setting out that the Commons has passed the Bill and presenting it for its First Reading here in your Lordships’ House. The Companion makes clear that the First Reading of a Bill is agreed without dissent or debate, and I fully intend to stand by that provision if, as we expect, the Bill is presented for First Reading. However, we understand that the Speaker in another place has declared that the Bill is a money Bill and is therefore covered by Commons financial privilege. The net effect of this is that this House will be unable to consider and debate the Bill and propose any amendments to it in its normal role as a revising Chamber.
The three provisions that the Bill seeks to modify were fully and properly considered in primary legislation in both Houses of Parliament, and we consider it a constitutional outrage for this House to be so prevented from considering the subsequent Bill, which will cut these payments now. If such a Bill is declared a money Bill then any such legislation can be designated in this way, again thereby attacking the role of this House as a revising Chamber and an important part of the checks and balances of our constitutional arrangements. In seeking to bring this important matter to the attention of the House we give notice that we will oppose this Bill at Second Reading and its declaration as a money Bill. Again, I believe that the Government are not conducting legislation in an entirely proper way.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will consider and reflect carefully on the latter part of his choice of words.
I remind the House of the guidance in the Companion. Paragraph 8.196 states:
“A money bill is a bill endorsed with a signed certificate of the Speaker of the House of Commons that it is a money bill because in the Speaker’s opinion it contains only provisions dealing with national, but not local, taxation, public money or loans or their management. The certificate of the Speaker is conclusive for all purposes”.
In addition, the Companion is clear that criticism of rulings of the Commons Speaker is out of order. Paragraph 4.44 states:
“Criticism of proceedings in the House of Commons or of Commons Speaker’s rulings is out of order, but criticism may be made of the institutional structure of Parliament or the role and function of the House of Commons”.
That debate is better had at Second Reading within that context.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, I am sure that that is entirely right. We will of course abide by those provisions and raise these matters at Second Reading, but, I repeat, all three of these issues were properly and fully considered by this House at all stages of those pieces of legislation. That is a record of which we should be proud.
Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill
Apportionment of Money in the National Lottery Distribution Fund Order 2010
Baroness Garden of Frognal
That the draft order laid before the House on 14 October be approved.
Relevant document: 4th report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 November.
Official Statistics Order 2010
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the draft order laid before the House on 13 October be approved.
Relevant document: 4th report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 November.
Public Bodies Bill [HL]
17:21 - Division on Amendment 1 - Ayes: 235 / Noes: 201 - Amendment 1 agreed.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, the amendment stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I shall speak also to some other amendments in my name and that of others that are in this group.
In his reply to the Second Reading debate on 9 November, the Minister responded positively to the serious concerns raised across the House and undertook to meet them by devising a parliamentary procedure that would,
“ensure proper public consultation and enhanced parliamentary scrutiny … We will also seek to amend the Bill to include safeguards to give independence to public bodies against unnecessary ministerial interference when performing technical functions, and when their activities require political impartiality and the need to act independently to establish facts”.
The Minister also undertook to see whether some of the bodies needed to be removed entirely from Schedule 7, and to address concerns,
“about bodies that deal with matters relating to the judiciary or otherwise to the administration of justice”.—[Official Report, 9/11/10; Col. 184.]
The Minister explained that the detailed and expert scrutiny by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as well as the Constitution Committee, would all need to be taken into account. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, has just met. It is awaiting a human rights memorandum from the Cabinet Office and hopes to report before Report.
The Minister’s positive response was welcome. He and his advisers have been generous in meeting noble Lords for further discussions. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published its report on the Bill three days later on 12 November.
Amendment 1 is important because it would pave the way for the proposed new clause to place restrictions on the powers conferred by the Act to act by way of delegated rather than primary legislation whenever Ministers intend to abolish or interfere with the constitutional arrangements, funding or management of the many disparate public bodies within the Bill’s reach. It is more than just a paving amendment since it is linked with the proposed new clause in Amendment 175, which would set clear limits on the exercise of the wide powers delegated to Ministers by the Bill. Taken together, Amendments 1 and 175 would perform the essential purpose of making Ministers accountable to the courts for breaches of well-known standards of public administration. I hope that the Minister will accept Amendment 1, or its effect, thereby leaving himself time before Amendment 175 is reached to modify his position on the further safeguards and restrictions that are needed. Amendment 1 would leave the door ajar, but it is the key that opens the door.
Our amendments, which have support from all sides of the House, need to be viewed in the context of the other amendments on public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and approval that will together create an appropriate framework for the exercise of these wide powers. They seek to make the Bill accord with constitutional standards and good practice, respecting the different institutional competence and separation of powers between the Executive and Parliament, and between those branches of government and the independent judiciary. Taken as a whole, they seek to secure democratic accountability to Parliament and the citizen, as well as to the courts in accordance with the rule of law. Like the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I believe that consultation should include public consultation.
If the House can agree on such a framework at an early stage in our debates, full arguments about whether particular orders should be made for this or that public body will be able to be made at the proper time by those affected and by each House of Parliament as and when a Minister finds it expedient to invoke the powers conferred by the Bill. The chilling effect on the independence and proper functioning of the bodies that need to operate independently of unnecessary ministerial interference will be greatly reduced, because Ministers will not be able to use the powers conferred by the Bill in the manner of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell. Parliament will require them to be accountable to the courts, to the public and to each House before they may do so. That is the necessary price they must pay for seeking powers of this magnitude.
There are four restrictions in Amendment 175. They seek to protect judicial independence, respect for human rights, a sense of proportion, and the independence and impartiality of bodies whose activities require them to act independently and impartially without unreasonable ministerial interference or direction.
Subsection (1)(a) of the new clause that would be inserted by Amendment 175 would protect the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and other public bodies or officeholders who perform judicial functions. The proposed provision embodies the principles of the rule of law and judicial independence that are set out in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, but it goes further by referring, as does the Equality Act 2010, to those who perform judicial functions even though they are not courts or tribunals. That also accords with the Minister’s assurance at Second Reading that he would address concerns,
“about bodies that deal with matters relating to the judiciary or otherwise to the administration of justice”.—[Official Report, 9/11/10; col. 184.]
I hope and expect that no Minister would wish to do otherwise.
Government Amendment 112 is narrower than Amendment 175, as it refers only to the independence of the judiciary. I hope the Minister will accept that, in principle, what he said at Second Reading needs to be reflected in the Bill on Report.
The activities of several public bodies within the Bill’s reach have been designed to promote or protect human rights. Those bodies include the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Children’s Commissioner, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the BBC, Channel Four Television Corporation, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Legal Services Board, the Parole Board, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales and others. If Ministers were to act in a way that undermined the capacity of such bodies to promote or protect human rights, they would not, as the Explanatory Notes to the Bill explain, directly engage the convention rights but they would undoubtedly engage the convention rights indirectly. Many of those bodies have a strong case for being removed from Schedule 7 altogether, as some of the bodies have to act judicially even though they are not courts in the classic sense.
I accept that it would not normally be necessary to make express provision to compel Ministers to act in a way that is in accordance with the convention rights because that is done in Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, but subsection (1)(b) of the new clause that would be inserted by Amendment 175 includes such a provision for the avoidance of doubt. The proposed provision would include the rights protected,
“by common law or equity”,
lest it be thought that such rights were abridged or reduced by the general powers conferred by the Bill. We look forward to the Minister’s response on that issue.
The formula used in Clauses 8(2)(a) and 8(2)(b) is taken from Section 3 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, so it provides that Ministers may not,
“remove any necessary protection, and … prevent any person from continuing to exercise any right or freedom which that person might reasonably expect to continue to exercise”.
Those provisions are vague, and the Explanatory Notes on the Bill are, if I may say so, opaque and much less illuminating than the Explanatory Notes that were provided for the 2006 Act. Therefore, I ask the Minister to confirm that the notion of “necessary protection” includes, as is the case in Section 3(2)(d) of the 2006 Act according to the Explanatory Notes on that provision, matters such as,
“economic protection, health and safety protection, and the protection of civil liberties, the environment and national heritage”.
I also ask the Minister to confirm that Clause 8(2)(b) is intended to include both convention and common law rights, including legitimate expectations.
The third restriction, in subsection (1)(c) of the new clause that would be inserted by Amendment 175, would require the use of,
“proportionate means to attain the objectives prescribed by section 8(1)”.
Paragraph 20 of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report draws attention to the fact that the Bill as it stands draws on the language of Section 3(2) of the 2006 Act, but that,
“significantly, the Bill does not import the other tests in section 3(2) of the 2006 Act: that the effect of the order is proportionate to the policy objective; that it strikes a fair balance; and that it is not constitutionally significant”.
The need to strike a fair balance is, I am sure the Minister will confirm, already included in the concept of proportionality, so there is no need to mention that in Amendment 175. It is also doubtful that there is any need to include a reference to what is or is not constitutionally significant, since the central purpose of Amendment 175 is to delineate the constitutional contours in the Bill. However, it is essential to include the requirement for the looser of the powers conferred to be proportionate to the legitimate aims prescribed by Clause 8(1).
The concept of proportionality is as English as apple pie, or as Scottish as haggis. The decision-maker must not use a sledgehammer to crack a nut and must not use lawful powers excessively or in a way that results in overkill. That is the basic principle used by both European courts and our own courts in giving effect to EU and convention law, and in applying the common law whereby the courts have said there is little difference between rationality and proportionality. In any assessment of proportionality, the courts leave a proper margin of discretion to the decision-maker, but it is essential to make it clear in the Bill that the powers that are delegated must be applied with a sense of proportion.
In his letter to my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester of 19 November, in response to her committee’s report, the Minister accepted that considerations of proportionality are clearly an aspect of Ministers’ considerations when having regard to the objective of securing increased efficiency, effectiveness and economy in the exercise of public functions, but he did not explain why the Bill should be weaker in that respect than the 2006 Act. The subject matter of the two measures is different, but the principle of proportionality should surely apply to the exercise of Ministers’ powers under both measures as a matter of legal obligation.
The Minister’s letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, in response to the report from her Constitution Committee, also seeks to justify the Government’s reluctance to include the requirement of proportionality in the Bill, as the previous Government did in the 2006 Act and in other legislation, including the Equality Act 2010, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will recall. Yet the Minister acknowledges that:
“A decision which was not proportionate, or was irrational, could of course be challenged in the Courts in the normal way”.
Quite apart from the fact that the principle of proportionality has yet to be fully recognised by our courts as a general principle of administrative law, there is no justification in that letter—or, I submit, otherwise—for failing to include the same protection against the excessive use of Ministers’ powers in this Bill as in the 2006 Act. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who can be said to be a rather greater authority than I could ever be in administrative law, will want to explain further the importance of the principle of proportionality in the context of this Bill.
Our Amendment 175 also requires:
“Where the nature and activities of a public body or office require the establishing of facts or the giving of expert advice independently and impartially, the powers conferred by the Act must be exercised in a way which ensures that the public body or office remains able to act in accordance with those requirements”.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee refers to this important issue in paragraph 38 of its first report. The Government’s amendment to Clause 8 is better expressed than our amendment, but it leaves the matter to relevant consideration by the Minister and is therefore weaker.
Amendment 106 is included to ensure that the matters to be considered in Clause 8(1) apply to the exercise of the powers conferred by Clause 11 to amend Schedules 1 to 6. Amendment 109 is designed to make the protection in Clause 8(2) objective rather than subject to the Minister’s discretion. Amendment 110 would make it necessary for the Minister to act reasonably, but those amendments will probably be unnecessary if, as we hope, the principle of proportionality is included in the Bill as an objective requirement. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
I support the noble Lord’s Amendments 1 and 175. What he said was wholly consistent with the acknowledged function of this House to protect the constitution and to amend the Bill as it goes through, to delay it and afford the other place an opportunity to reconsider or, indeed, to compromise. What the noble Lord said is wholly consistent with that. What the Opposition will say in a moment is not, so I am not speaking about the Opposition. This is a sound approach for the reasons that I have given and it was very well presented.
Lord Pannick
I have added my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, for a simple reason: this is a bad Bill. It confers excessive power on the Executive. It is of fundamental importance to include in the Bill as many protective provisions as possible.
Amendment 1, read with Amendment 175, has a simple purpose. It would restrict ministerial powers so that they can be exercised only in a way that is compatible with judicial independence and human rights and freedoms; is used proportionately; and does not prevent a public body performing its functions to establish facts or to give expert advice independently and impartially. I cannot imagine that the Minister could possibly disagree with any of those well established principles. I suspect he might say that he is doubtful that such principles need to be expressed in the Bill. However, he does then need to explain to the Committee why such principles were expressly included in the 2006 Act. He also needs not merely to explain this question of precedent but to address the question of principle.
Given the breadth of the powers that the Minister seeks in the context of the Bill; given the concerns that were expressed about the scope of those powers by your Lordships’ Committee on the Constitution, of which I am a member, and by your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; and given the concerns expressed by many of your Lordships at Second Reading, it is of vital importance to identify in the Bill important constraints on the exercise of these powers. It is important for two reasons. It is important to ensure that future Ministers are as careful in their use of the powers as I am sure the Minister will be. It is also important to reassure public bodies and members of the public that we in Parliament have not lightly conferred such powers on Ministers, but rather that we have been anxious to emphasise in the Bill that there are important limits on what Parliament is willing to authorise Ministers to do.
The importance of Amendment 1, read with Amendment 175, is confirmed by the much weaker protection that the Minister is inviting the Committee to add to the Bill in his amendments. The Government’s amendments, although a welcome improvement on the original Bill, are insufficient. They simply require the Minister to consider defined matters before exercising powers. They do not—as they should—prevent the Minister making an order if and to the extent that it would interfere with the independence of the judiciary, or concern functions which require to be exercised independently of Ministers as they involve giving impartial advice or the scrutiny of Ministers’ actions. For example, government Amendment 108, which we are considering in this group, will require the Minister to consider only the extent to which the functions affected by the order need to be exercised independently of Ministers. If the functions do indeed relate to such matters, primary legislation should be required to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny. Amendment 109, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, would remove from Clause 8(2) “the Minister considers that” in relation to necessary protections.
It should not be simply a matter of the Minister forming an opinion on these matters; the Bill must provide that he or she cannot make an order if it would remove necessary protections, such as interfering with the independence of the judiciary. That would ensure—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am entirely sympathetic to what he and my noble friend Lord Lester are saying but I hope that he can help me and, I think, the House by answering the following question. I think he said that the provisions in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) in the proposed new subsection (1) in Amendment 175 are implied by law and therefore do not need to be expressed in the statute. My noble friend Lord Lester wonders about proportionality, but by inserting existing powers in this Bill, are we in danger of shackling future legislation where those provisions are not inserted in the relevant Bill, and perhaps therefore getting into an argument that, as they are not there, they are not considered part of the Bill? I hope that I have expressed myself clearly.
Lord Pannick
I am grateful to the noble Lord. Of course, that is precisely what Parliament did in the 2006 Act. As I have sought to explain, the reason it did it in that legislation, and the reason it should do it in this legislation is because this Bill is so exceptional—it seeks to give a degree of power to Ministers which requires that the constraints are set out in the Bill in the clearest possible way in order to give confidence to those public bodies which may be the subject of orders made in the future. Regrettably, there is still doubt about whether proportionality is a general legal principle that applies to the exercise of all administrative functions.
I was dealing with the Minister’s amendment, which accepts that necessary protection includes the independence of the judiciary within the meaning of Section 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and that is very welcome. However, Section 3 of that Act states that all Ministers of the Crown,
“must uphold the continued independence of the judiciary”.
It does not merely say that Ministers must consider upholding the independence of the judiciary, or that Ministers must not take any action which they consider would conflict with the independence of the judiciary. This is important because the constitutional principle is that it is the duty of Ministers, and all others concerned with the administration of justice, to observe the independence of the judiciary.
As so many of your Lordships explained on Second Reading, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, if Ministers are to be granted those broad powers to make orders—a matter to which I am sure that we will return later in Committee—it is vital that those powers are as circumscribed as possible. They must not trespass on the independence of the judiciary and on other fundamental principles, or undermine the functions of bodies whose task is to scrutinise government conduct and give impartial advice to the Government.
I very much hope that the Minister will feel able to accept Amendment 1. If not, I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, will regard this as a matter of considerable importance as we begin Committee and will seek the opinion of the House.
Lord Clinton-Davis
If the Government were to prevail so far as the amendment was concerned, could the issue be raised again in the courts? I think it could.
Lord Pannick
I am sure that there would be ample room for argument in the courts. I am concerned that we do not leave matters of this importance, in relation to a Bill that confers such exceptional powers on the Executive, to legal argument for the future. It is our task and our responsibility to ensure that these matters are clearly stated in the legislation that we are considering.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I endorse the words of both noble Lords, Lord Lester of Herne Hill and Lord Pannick. I urge the Minister and the Committee to do the same.
Amendments 14 and 107 seek to ensure that, in any move to abolish, merge or alter the various organisations listed in the various schedules, the Minister must have regard to the original powers or objectives laid down in law for those bodies. It would therefore not be enough to say simply, “We can save money by these changes”, although I always agree with saving money. The amendments would make it necessary to consider more than just the need for specialist and technical expertise, much though I also support that; and more than simply independence from government, as has been spoken of, much as I also concur with that.
Parliament needs to be satisfied that the raison d'être of each body—its objective, as set down in statute—will be protected and continued under whichever body takes over from the abolished, reformed or merged organisation. I would like to give four brief examples listed in the schedules where legislation has been passed, including through this House, to give powers or duties to those organisations. We need assurance that, in any change to their status, the very purpose and duties for which they were set up should be retained, even if carried out in a more resource-efficient way.
I start with the Legal Services Board; I declare an interest as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, which is funded by the Legal Services Board. The Legal Services Act 2007 requires the establishment of the board, and says that it,
“must … act in a way … compatible with the”,
Act’s “regulatory objectives”, which are about,
“protecting and promoting the public interest … supporting the constitutional principle of the rule of law … improving access to justice … promoting competition in the provision of services”,
and,
“encouraging an independent, strong, diverse and effective legal profession”.
The Act also demands that the board promotes adherence to the professional principles of lawyers, which are to,
“act with independence and integrity … act in the best interests of their clients”,
and,
“comply with their duty to the court to act with independence in the interests of justice”.
This goes further than judicial independence—important though that is; those objectives would need to be retained. My amendment would ensure that those objectives were still met if there were any alteration to the board’s set-up. They are absolutely central to the administration of justice.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
The noble Baroness makes a powerful case, but can she help me? The powers in the Bill are wide enough to deal with bodies that have outlived their useful life or are in need of substantial and radical reform. My idea is that it would be a sensible way forward to hedge the powers with sufficient safeguards. What about the noble Baroness’s approach? What happens if Ministers rationally and proportionately decide that body X has outlived its useful purpose or needs radical reform? Would not her Amendment 107 produce a situation of fossilisation?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
The idea is that they should have regard to those objectives. If the objectives are no longer required, or if they could be dealt with in a different way by a different body, that would be one thing. My concern is that if we look only at the issue of independence—which I spoke about, and stressed the importance of, at Second Reading—this will not be sufficient if the power given by the Bill to a body to make sure something happens is still needed. There is nothing else in the Bill as it stands—and even with the other amendments—to make sure that those duties, for example to look after the interests of consumers in rural areas, or of vulnerable consumers, are still carried out. They must have regard to those interests, but my concern is that the purpose for which primary legislation set up these bodies, and the duties which it gave them, should be considered by the Minister before he exercises his power. In passing the Bill, Parliament must be confident that where the functions are still needed, they will still exist under the new body, which will have the same strength to safeguard whichever group of users or vulnerable people or pension members whose interests are covered by the 150 groups listed in Schedule 7. Therefore, the amendments in this group seek to ensure not only that the new bodies are independent, but that the purposes for which Parliament set up the old bodies, if they are still needed, will be retained by the new bodies, which will have the relevant powers.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I am sorry to invite the Committee to listen to another lawyer quite so soon. I regret very much that, as I was abroad, I could not be present for Second Reading. However, I express my complete and respectful agreement with the speeches of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Woolf and Lord Mayhew, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and indeed many others. As a result of Second Reading, we now have before us very elaborate amendments covering the question of proper consultation and procedure. The amendments were pioneered by the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, who were followed by Her Majesty's loyal Opposition and then by the Government. I will certainly vote for one of the amendments, and all three if necessary.
However, welcome though the amendments are, they do not hide the remaining glaring deformities of the Bill. In particular, I will concentrate on government Amendment 108 in this group, which has been referred to already by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. Clause 8 establishes the two main objectives of the Bill: to bring about greater efficiency and accountability. The clause is said to be the great safeguard in the Bill. However, the moment I read about greater accountability to Ministers, I hear a warning signal. We should read carefully Amendment 108 to Clause 8. It states:
“For the purposes of the objective referred to in subsection (1)(b)”—
that is the accountability objective—
“the Minister must consider the extent to which functions affected by the order need to be exercised independently of Ministers—(a) because they require the exercise of professional or specialist expertise, or the making of decisions or giving of advice, by a person who is impartial as respects Ministers’ policy”.
I shall leave for the moment proposed new paragraph (b).
The moment I read that amendment to Clause 8, I began to feel that we were verging on a contradiction in terms. The whole objective, it is said, is to lead to greater accountability, yet at the same time it is said that the Minister is to take into account matters which emphasise the bodies’ independence of Ministers. I find it very difficult to see how these two apparently contradictory objectives can be reconciled. Exactly the same applies—perhaps even more so—to paragraph (b) in Amendment 108, which says,
“because they involve establishing facts in relation to, or oversight or scrutiny of, Ministers’ actions”.
It seems to me that, once the facts in relation to that are established regarding any of the bodies in Schedules 1 to 6, it must no longer be a matter for the Minister’s consideration—a point made effectively by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. Once it is established that that is the purpose of the body in question, then surely it is not a matter for the Minister’s consideration; at that point, the body must be taken out of Schedules 1 to 6 altogether and left to primary legislation.
Either this amendment means nothing at all or, if it means anything, it is contradictory to the main objective and is therefore likely to lead to a great deal of litigation in the future, which one can easily envisage. In the mean time, however, if the relevant facts in relation to any particular body are established, then the only solution, with great respect, is to take that body out of Schedules 1 to 6 altogether.
Lord Soley
We have just heard four very powerful speeches, which I hope will influence the Government. I shall try not to repeat the various points that have been made but I agree with them. My noble friend Lady Hayter made a very good point when she talked about the Legal Services Board and the Legal Services Commission, because these bodies need to be seen to be independent.
I am disappointed by the Government’s amendments for two reasons. First, I think that there is very wide agreement, both in this House and indeed in the House of Commons, with what the Government want to achieve. There is no argument about the need to find new and better ways of ending, changing or winding up quangos, and there is a wonderful opportunity here for all-party agreement in both Houses about improving the way in which we set up these bodies and change them.
The second reason I am disappointed is that at Second Reading I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who I thought—indeed, I said it to many people—made a very powerful and thoughtful speech. He seemed to have grasped the acute anxiety felt across this House about the extent of the power being given to Ministers over Parliament. That is what triggers so much of the concern and it follows on from the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, which focuses very much on the critical issue of the judiciary.
The Government still do not understand that this is a question of how much power a Minister has to override Parliament—that is what it boils down to and I say it deliberately and distinctly. As has already been stated, government Amendments 167, 168 and 108, which I am sure the noble Lord will speak to in due course, require the Minister to consider. That is a very small step forward but it does not address the fact that, once the Minister has considered, he can still go ahead and carry out the actions that he was thinking of taking with or without any changes, regardless of what Parliament may have said or done. Parliament cannot make amendments, as was originally the case when the primary legislation went through.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry
Like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I served on the Constitution Committee that produced the first report on the Public Bodies Bill. As the noble Lord will remember, I shared his horror—that is perhaps the appropriate word—when we first read this Bill and studied it. Listening to what has been said, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I feel a great need to hear what the Minister has to say to us before taking a final decision. I have talked to the Minister, as have others, in recent days and in talking to us he was very well aware of the need to bring in procedures that would involve public consultation, parliamentary consultation and, indeed, the ability of Parliament to say no, if it wants to.
Listening is very important, but one also has to consider not just the law on this but the situation that the Government found, which they wish to tidy up. There are, I think, something like 500 public bodies mentioned in the Bill. Some of them have never worked at all, some duplicate the work of others and some would run better twinned with others. That, one knows, was the basis for bringing in the Bill in the first place, along with the Government’s wish to try to reduce the cost of quangos as one step in reducing the amount of public money spent in this country. I approach it from that angle, rather than from the legal angle.
I expect that we all know bodies on this list that we have worked with. Sometimes we have got frustrated, and other times we have been very satisfied. I declare a particular interest in the national parks, because I have been involved in the South Downs for a long time. We are about to become part of the new national park, and I am very interested to know just how the laws, the custom, of the national parks are going to affect inhabitants of Lewes and Sussex, such as myself. However, I realise that even with as big a body as the national parks, we all have to look at the possibility of pruning and streamlining and spending less public money. For me, that is the spirit behind the Bill.
In other amendments—for example, Amendments 114 and 118—your Lordships will see the very definite wish of the Government, through my noble friend Lord Taylor, to have procedures and consultation that are widespread but much more effective. That is the positive side of what is being looked at today, and it is for that reason that I will in the end, I hope, vote with the Government because this tidying up is very much needed and we are taking a step in the right direction.
Lord Woolf
My Lords, if what we were embarked on in this Bill was tidying up and that was the exercise to which we were limited, I would have no trouble with this Bill. However, it is my belief that the Bill goes miles beyond such an exercise. As a result, notwithstanding the fact that I agree with virtually everything that has been said about amendments to this Bill, I need add virtually nothing.
If I should add something, it would be to this effect. I admire the ingenuity and the skill with which the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, have found ways to curtail the extraordinarily wide powers that this Bill gives. But, even with those provisions, which are very welcome, the fact remains that things are being done by this Bill which are just inappropriate. That is why I am troubling to take up your Lordships’ time.
The bodies referred to in Schedule 7 are not the sort of bodies which, because of their very nature and their importance, should be abolished, amended or modified in accordance with the scheme of this Bill. It is almost an insult to the constitutional principles involved in dealing with bodies of that nature, which should be shown care and respect, to treat them in this cavalier way. Each of the bodies in Schedule 7 can say, “We are the sort of bodies that if we are going to be changed have to be changed by primary legislation so that we cannot only consider what will happen if we are moved to another schedule, but what will be put in our place if we no longer perform the functions which Parliament has in most cases entrusted to us? We would refer those responsible for the administration of justice to the manner in which we can protect the improper interests of the administration of justice”.
While that is true and self-evident in the case of Schedule 7 bodies, it is also, to a substantial extent, true in the case of some of the bodies—I emphasise the word “some”—in Schedule 1. I draw attention especially to the first and the last bodies mentioned in Schedule 1. However, I know that these matters will be dealt with later, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, as regards the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. It used to be called the Council of Tribunals, which played a significant part in the development of administrative principles of good practice in this country. The bodies subject to the supervision and guidance of the council are bodies which provide for the great bulk of the citizens in this country the only way in which they can obtain justice in regard to matters that may, in the scale of some of the matters that come before the courts, seem modest, but which are very important to the individual citizen.
If you are seeking a benefit or you say, “I have been deprived of a benefit to which I am entitled”, you go to one of the tribunals supervised by this body. If you are complaining about your tax, you go to the tribunals dealing with revenue issues. These bodies affect, from time to time, most citizens in this country. They need the watchdog which the council provided. The watchdog was there, not to protect the rights of the tribunal or the Executive, but to act on behalf of the public as their watchdog to ensure that the bodies are meeting the standards that are required of bodies of the nature to which I have referred. You cannot remove the dangers created in this Bill by putting such bodies in Schedule 1. The council to which I have just referred can be removed by order in circumstances where there will be no proper consideration of how the body operates as a whole.
I turn to the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, which is the last of the bodies referred to in Schedule 1. There may be controversy as to the role the board has played in assisting the way in which we deal with the very significant problem of misbehaviour and crimes committed by the young, but if we take the Youth Justice Board away, as Schedule 1 presupposes, we have to think about what should be put in its place. This Bill is not the proper machinery in which to consider an issue of that sort. It can be considered properly only in the context of an examination of how we approach the criminal conduct of youths subject to the board. I should tell the Minister that a great many of those intimately involved in the criminal justice system think that the Youth Justice Board has been a positive move and that in certain periods during its life it has improved the manner in which we handle the difficult problem of how to treat youngsters involved in these unfortunate matters.
I was impressed by the open-mindedness with which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, considered what was submitted to him in the debate on Second Reading. I hope that he will also consider what has been said in the course of this debate because it is important and deals with principles of long standing.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, may I respectfully ask the noble and learned Lord a question? By implication, I think he is suggesting that I am slightly too moderate, which may be the case. But if one takes as an example the Judicial Appointments Commission and assumes that some minor but necessary changes need to be made to its structure or administration, one has the ironclad and objective safeguards of independence as well as the other safeguard written in of objective standards. One has also the safeguards of public consultation and the need for the Minister to come before each House to justify the order on the facts, with reasons given. Is the position of the noble and learned Lord that, even with all those safeguards, nothing can be done in relation to that body except by primary legislation? If that is his position, with great respect, it seems disproportionate.
Lord Woolf
My Lords, as always the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has made a good point. But the fact of the matter is this: is the procedure set out in this Bill the appropriate way of dealing with the minor amendments to which he has referred? He has taken as an example the body which, ironically, was designed to achieve the independence of the judiciary from the Executive by ensuring that the way in which judges are appointed is separated from the Executive. What the Bill will do is say that if we want to amend or abolish that body, we will go through a two-stage process. First, we will move it to another schedule, and possibly discuss that in this House. We will then go through another process to achieve the desired amendment. If it is wrong in principle, as I submit it is, to treat a body of this sort by placing it in Schedule 7, then the fact that one day some minor amendment might need to be made to that body does not justify the treatment being proposed. The Judicial Appointments Commission justifies proper consideration because even minor amendments can affect such a body in ways that caused this House to look so carefully, in the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, at how in the future we would appoint our judges.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I hope the Committee will forgive me for not being present throughout the debate on this first amendment but I have been at a Select Committee.
I rise for two reasons: first, respectfully to agree with everything that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said; and, secondly, to point out four particular examples in Schedule 7 which are subject to the power to add to other schedules. I cannot see how the examples I am going to give could be added to other schedules. First, where would the Royal Botanic Gardens go to? Secondly, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service had a very unhappy gestation but has now become relatively effective; to interfere with it would be a disaster for children in this country. I know something about the third example, the Family Procedure Rule Committee, because I used to be its chairman. Where do you put that? My last example is the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The Committee will remember the Chinese cockle pickers and why we established the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. How on earth can it be added to another schedule?
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I rise, first, because I want to get a word in edgeways as a non-lawyer; and, secondly, because it seems appropriate that I should follow part of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said—prefacing it by declaring a now historic interest as the person who chaired the Council on Tribunals and its successor body, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, for no fewer than 10 years from 1999 until last year. My name is not attached to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and I shall speak to the AJTC later, but I appreciate and agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has said.
As I was not able to be here for Second Reading, I shall not make the Second Reading speech I might have made, deeply unhelpful as the Government would have regarded it. However, I wish to make three points. First, I welcome, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the spirit in which my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach has responded to the criticisms at Second Reading. Whether or not it goes far enough we shall discover in the course of our debates, but it has been a remarkable exercise in rewriting the Bill as it goes along. It must have taken him quite a lot of work to persuade his colleagues to make such changes. I congratulate him and I do not want to make his life any more difficult.
Secondly, albeit as a non-lawyer and without going over all the speeches, I could not find a word uttered by the original proponent, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, or his seconder, as it were, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with which I disagree, and there are probably quite a few noble Lords on this side of the Committee who share that view.
Thirdly, I say to my noble friend—as I am happy to call him—Lord Phillips, a former constituent, and to the Minister that I spent five years as Leader of the House of Commons—I was more or less in charge of the Government’s programme in those days—listening to Ministers trying to say that you did not need to put stuff in a Bill because it was implicit and impaling themselves on a ludicrous argument that something that did not make any difference was worth dying in a ditch over. I hope the Minister is not going to do it again.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. I shall refer to inappropriate use of delegated legislation. I should declare an interest as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. It may be helpful to Members who have not had an opportunity to see our sixth report to tell them in brief what it says.
In its fifth report, the committee strongly expressed the view that the Bill provided Ministers with unacceptable discretion to rewrite the statute book with inadequate parliamentary scrutiny and control of the process. It found that the Bill was almost “wholly enabling” and granted Ministers enormous discretion to use delegated powers to abolish or restructure a large number of public bodies and offices. I echo what has already been said around the House about the response of the Minister in trying to address some of the fundamental issues that were raised at Second Reading, and we are grateful for that, but the committee concluded in its report, published this morning, that the concerns had not been resolved and that,
“the powers themselves are not … appropriate delegations of legislative power”.
That brings me to the speech just made by my noble friend Lord Soley. While the Minister has tried in his Amendment 108 and those that follow to address some of the concerns through a form of affirmative procedure, it is simply not adequate to deal with the fundamental problems identified with such eloquence by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and other Members of this House.
I have some problems with the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in the context of the comparison rightly made between this Bill and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. The Government introduce in Amendment 118 a new procedure for orders. It is a form of super-affirmative order. Unfortunately, the Government’s argument as to why it is sufficient is disingenuous.
The Minister argued in his letter to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that the Bill is narrower than the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 because that Act applied to policies at large and that the range of protections in it was therefore not appropriate for this Bill. The fact is that this Bill is wider than the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. Although the 2006 Act is wider in scope, in the sense that it can involve any public policy or legislation, its effect is narrower, because it is strictly limited to making processes more transparent, accountable, proportionate and consistent. Those are very specific requirements. This Bill is narrow only in the sense that it deals with public bodies, but the powers that it has taken, described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, are enormous. What is more, in Schedule 7, we do not know even what those powers will be or what they will be used for. That is what exercises this Committee and it should exercise the Government.
Even more important, Section 2 of the 2006 Act cannot be used to abolish or confer any new regulatory functions, but Clauses 1, 2 and 5 of this Bill expressly provide for the abolition and the creation of regulatory functions. If the Minister were to take my point and say that he would come forward with an amendment which imported all the relevant procedures of the 2006 Act into this Bill, the House would have this additional capacity: it would take only a recommendation, not a resolution, of a committee of either House to require the Government to have regard to representations, resolutions and recommendations.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I make a very brief point to support my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf in his support for the general principle behind the Bill and also in his concerns. I refer to one document that has not so far been mentioned—the impact assessment. We have heard enough already around this House to realise that there is something wrong in an impact assessment that can say that the Bill has no direct impact on human rights or the justice system. It suggests to me that those who drew up that impact assessment cannot have thought through what they were actually including in this Bill. I hope very much that the Minister will be able to repudiate that impact assessment.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, may I mention two matters very briefly? The first is the matter that was dealt with so magnificently by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf. It seems to me that only an insensitive Government would even contemplate putting in any one of those schedules quasi-judicial bodies that are so central in their very existence and purpose to the administration of justice. There is no justification whatever for allowing them to remain in that particular jeopardy; they should be inviolate; they should be free from any prospect of ministerial diktat.
The second matter is the wider point of the issue that is before the Committee. Many people will say that they think the issue is whether Ministers should have the right and power to deal in such a savagely surgical way with 481 public bodies. No, that is not the issue. The issue is not the question of the conflict between Ministers and those bodies but that between the Executive and the sovereignty of Parliament. The question is whether those Ministers should have the power to strike down all those masses of legislative developments that have led to the very creation of those bodies in the first place. That is the issue. If I may make a biblical reference, I would say that the proposal is almost an Armageddon issue.
Henry VIII clauses are nothing new. About 80 years ago, Sir Gordon Hewart, a former Attorney-General who later became Lord Chief Justice, wrote a book called The New Despotism, whose title refers to the use of such clauses. Over the past 80 years, there has been a massive growth in the use of Henry VIII clauses such that we have now reached the point at which Parliament must either say no and call a halt to their use or allow the situation to develop ever further and thereby corrupt even the existence of Parliament.
Lord Clinton-Davis
I would like to say a few words, so I propose to speak for about two minutes.
I think that the indictment that the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, have mounted today is worthy not only of the agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to their amendments but of his agreement to the withdrawal of the Bill. We have been especially fortunate to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, give a devastating denunciation of the Bill today that ought to be heard by those on the government Benches.
We all have a great affection for the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who has done an enormous amount to try to improve the unimprovable. The Minister has made some gallant efforts, but the best thing that he could do, in my view, is to withdraw the Bill and enable the House to consider afresh what ought to be done.
I simply want to underline my concerns as a solicitor. Amendment 175 interprets some crucial and important points that the Government have neglected. To confer upon Ministers the powers that the Government currently contemplate in the Bill is unworthy. The limitations that are provided for in the amendment are really crucial, so I hope that the Government will take those into account properly in their consideration of what has been said.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, although I speak not for the committee but in a personal capacity.
There is no doubt that it is sensible to review the activities of public bodies—the House is agreed on that—but there are already processes within most pieces of legislation to provide for that. Quinquennial and other reviews, which are a factor of the corporate life of most public bodies, provide regular opportunities for consideration of all the issues such as functions, powers and budgets that are referred to in the Bill. The use of such reviews could provide a starting point from which there could be a coherent review of individual bodies that might, or might not, lead to the need for primary legislation.
Given the importance—indeed, the essential nature—of the work of some of the bodies included in the Bill that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and other noble Peers have highlighted, I wish to address whether the Bill includes adequate provision to ensure proper parliamentary control. The problem of course, as noble Lords have all agreed, is that the Bill itself is fundamentally flawed. It is the prerogative of Parliament to make laws, and that prerogative has been exercised on numerous occasions to enable the creation of many of the bodies that are referred to in the Bill, although others were created by royal charter. On each occasion, the passing of the legislation was designed to address a lacuna in current provision and, in many cases, to provide protection in accordance with such fundamentals as the principles of natural justice and human rights. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has already referred to the peculiar nature of the impact assessment that has been produced for the Bill.
The Bill seeks to delegate powers to Ministers to abolish, merge or modify the bodies listed in the schedules to the Bill. Noble Lords have already pointed to the significance of the individual statutory duty on many of those bodies. The Constitution Committee has declared that, in the cases that it examined, the question was whether Ministers should have the power to change the statute book for the specific purposes provided for in the Bill and, if so, whether there are adequate procedural safeguards. The committee stated:
“In our view, the Public Bodies Bill … fails both tests”.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, says, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which is representative of all parties, unanimously agreed that,
“the powers contained in clauses 1 to 5 and 11 as they are currently drafted are not appropriate delegations of legislative power. They would grant to Ministers unacceptable discretion to rewrite the statute book, with inadequate parliamentary scrutiny of, and control over, the process”.
There has been no change to the essential nature of Clauses 1 to 5 and Clause 11 in the amendments presented by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. As the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Lester, have said, when there is a delegation of a legislative power, it must be accompanied by adequate powers of parliamentary control and scrutiny. Where delegation itself is inappropriate and unconstitutional to the extent that the delegation proposed in this Bill has been declared to be, there can be no adequate powers of parliamentary control and scrutiny to redress the mischief clearly contained in the Bill.
The Government have argued that there are time pressures which mean that the legislation must be presented in this form rather than through primary legislation. I suggest—and, indeed, submit—that the effect of this legislation, if passed, would be to lead to very extensive and expensive litigation, some of which would probably end up in the highest courts, both here and in Europe. Even if this Bill were passed, it would become necessary to engage in a long and exhaustive process of consultation for each body. While in some cases the outcome might be simple, in others it clearly would not be the case. Huge concern has been articulated in the public domain.
This Bill, which places in peril the ongoing existence and functions of fundamentally important bodies such as the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Chief Coroner's Office, cannot be subjected to sufficient parliamentary control by virtue of the provisions for control of the delegated legislative powers tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in this respect. The impact of this legislation and the extent to which attempts have been made in the House to control the exercise of legislative powers do not address the issue.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Did the committee of which the noble Baroness is a member conclude that the powers in this Bill are unprecedented in terms of delegation?
Baroness O'Loan
I would not wish to speak of the committee without referring back to the report, but we did conclude that the delegation of these powers was inappropriate. We also concluded that, unless there were changes to the legislation, Clause 11 and Schedule 7 should be removed from the Bill.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I shall speak to my Amendment 175 and support the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, and my noble friend Lady Hayter. At Second Reading we made it clear that our concerns with the Bill were not with the principle of a regular review of public bodies or—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Renton—with the tidying-up process. Our overriding concern is with the draconian powers that could be available to Ministers. I am the first to acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has introduced a series of amendments and I am grateful to him for so doing, but I simply do not think that they go far enough. The Government have underestimated the concerns of noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Soley was surely right that the amendments are surprising in view of the trenchant criticism made of the Bill by two committees of your Lordships' House. The Constitution Committee said that the Bill,
“strikes at the very heart of our constitutional system”,
while the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said that it considered,
“the powers contained in clauses 1 to 5 and 11 as they are currently drafted are not appropriate delegations of legislative power. They would grant to Ministers unacceptable discretion to rewrite the statute book, with inadequate parliamentary scrutiny of, and control over, the process”.
That is the context in which we consider this group of amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said that it is not really about the 450 bodies listed in the Bill; it is about the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. He is absolutely right.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I rise to speak to the Government’s amendments in this grouping. I am delighted to have the chance to debate these amendments which, as my noble friend Lord Lester has pointed out, are crucial to maintaining Parliament’s confidence that these powers will be used effectively and appropriately. I am encouraged by the level of consensus on the objectives of these amendments, along with those in subsequent groups that have been tabled with the aim of strengthening the framework in which these powers will operate.
I am determined to knock this Bill into shape. We have heard a number of contributions that could be considered to be Second Reading speeches, and we have had to go over ground covered at Second Reading. I do not hesitate to revisit this matter because it is important to reassure the Committee that one cannot sit in this House without being aware of the need to get the balance right between Parliament and government.
I thank my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry for his contribution. He recognised that the Government needed to tackle this problem of public bodies efficiently and effectively because the public expect that of Parliament. However, I understand that Parliament itself, having set up bodies by primary legislation, feels that it needs its say in the process of reorganising public bodies, in specifics and in general.
My noble friend Lord Newton asked that I recognised the difference between explicit and implicit wording in the legislation. I understand that; it is a valuable point and I am grateful to him for making it.
I cannot go all the way suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, who asked me to withdraw the Bill. That is a big ask, if I might say so, and I hope that he will understand that I might not be able to meet it. I have to be honest; I do not think that I will be able to meet all the views expressed in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan—she is not in her place at the moment, unfortunately—took a fundamentalist view of the use of legislation of this type to try to deal with this matter. However, from the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I felt that they wanted some success out of the Bill. It would be wrong of me not to say that I listened to their contributions with great interest, as I did at Second Reading. I noted, too, the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I will refer to the contribution made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and to other contributions on particular aspects of the subject where I am grateful for the elucidation that we received.
I said at Second Reading that I would seek to amend the Bill to safeguard the independence of public bodies in exercising certain functions. Government Amendment 108 does just that by amending Clause 8 to ensure that Ministers consider the need for functions to be exercised independently because they require professional or specialist expertise or impartial advice in respect of Ministers’ policy, or because they involve establishing facts in relation to scrutiny of Ministers’ actions. That set of amendments goes back to the Statement that I repeated in this House—if I remember correctly, it was 14 October—made by my right honourable friend Mr Francis Maude, as to the tests applied to public bodies. That must be placed on the face of the Bill, so that it is clear what test the Government apply in determining the validity of the independence of public bodies because of their functions.
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report on the Government’s amendments states that the additional safeguards in Amendment 108 are still too limited. We take the report seriously and thank the committee again for its continued contribution to the debate on the Bill. On the important subject of safeguards, our amendments represent a proportionate response to the committee’s original concerns. We will of course consider further the detailed points raised in the committee’s second report and work with Peers to meet their concerns. On regulatory functions, the Government have already made it clear that they will not use the powers conferred by the Bill to make changes to network regulatory functions, and that such an exclusion is not necessary in the Bill.
In response to concerns raised on Second Reading, I have also tabled government amendments to make it clear that the necessary protections which the Minister must consider to be satisfied include the independence of the judiciary. I would like to make it clear that the principle of judicial independence, as guaranteed by the Constitutional Reform Act, is not altered or weakened in any way by the Bill. However, given the concerns raised, I have included a specific reference to that principle.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, this has been a remarkable debate, with more than 20 speeches that will be read long after we are all dead, because the importance of this constitutional issue transcends anything that we are considering today. I am grateful to all noble Lords and to the Minister for their contributions. I will make no attempt to summarise or reply to the more than 20 speeches, although I will say that I find myself agreeing with almost everything in all of them.
Before I explain what I think is the right approach, I will respond to what the Minister has just said by noting the gains that we have made and those that we still need to make. I think that that is the most practical way of proceeding and I shall, I hope, do it quickly.
The Minister’s first point was that he wants, through government Amendment 108, to amend the Bill to safeguard the independence of public bodies in exercising certain functions by amending Clause 8 to ensure that Ministers consider, and so on. The problem with that amendment, as several noble Lords have said, is that it relies on the subjective consideration of the Minister, and that, I think, is something to which we shall have to return.
The report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says that the additional safeguards in Amendment 108 are still too limited. The Minister helpfully explained that the Government take the report very seriously and that they are going to consider it and further detailed points, which is most welcome. He then made clear the necessary protections which the Minister must consider to be satisfied, including the independence of the judiciary. He explained that he wants to make it clear that the principle of judicial independence, as guaranteed by the Constitutional Reform Act, is not altered or weakened in any way by the Bill. That, of course, is the reassurance that one would hope for.
The Minister then dealt with my amendment which says that the powers must be exercised in a way that is compatible with judicial independence and the exercise of judicial functions. He indicated that he will take away my concerns and think about whether that can be reflected in the Bill. That is most welcome and I am grateful.
He then said that, given the concern expressed by noble Lords, he will look again at the inclusion of bodies with a judicial function in Schedule 7. He reassured us that he will bring forward amendments in relation to those bodies for a debate on the schedule later in Committee. Again, I think that the Committee will find that most welcome.
The Minister then mentioned human rights, pointing out that there is no need to refer to the convention rights in the Bill. However, that does not deal with the problem of rights going beyond the convention in common law and equity. That may be something that one needs to think about hereafter.
He then turned to the notion of necessary protection in the Bill, confirming that it extends to economic protection, health and safety, and the protection of civil liberties and the environment. That, again, is welcomed. He then turned to the important question of proportionality and said that he is still inclined to think that a specific reference to it is not needed in the Bill. I strongly disagree with that—a view that I think was expressed by several noble Lords.
The Minister dealt with the orders under Clause 11 and said that he would look again at whether there was any benefit in extending Clause 8 to apply to the powers in Clause 11. I think that most noble Lords hope that that will be done.
He then dealt again with the phrase “if the Minister considers”. However, most noble Lords have indicated that that is not good enough. The Minister said that he thought the Government’s amendment strengthening the requirements in Clause 8(2) struck the right balance, whereas he believed that the regulatory reform committee’s suggestion that it should be for Parliament would not strike the right balance. That is clearly a matter for future debate.
The Minister then turned to the interesting points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, concerning her amendments. I think that the Minister may have misunderstood the noble Baroness’s point. It is not about independence at all. She submitted that one needs to make sure that Ministers understand the core functions and raisons d’être of a particular organisation before they even think of exercising ministerial powers. That is something that the Minister may therefore want to consider.
I come to what is called the courage of my convictions. I do not need any instruction on the courage of my convictions, but I am a practical fellow and trying to think about what is the most sensible way forward. We all know that it is the practice of this House not to make amendments in Committee unless there is an extremely good reason for doing so. In this case, I want to leave breathing space between now and further proceedings in Committee—not between now and Report—to give the Government the opportunity to do the sort of things that the Minister has indicated today and which noble Lords around the Committee have also indicated. Having heard noble Lords speak, I do not think that Amendment 175 goes far enough. If I divide the Committee, I will probably win on Amendment 1, but it will serve no practical purpose unless a clear series of safeguards follows.
Lord Pannick
After a two-hour debate on matters of fundamental importance, does the noble Lord accept that it would be of value for the Committee’s opinion to be tested so that the Minister—whose open attitude is much admired by all noble Lords—and the Government generally are left in no doubt of the Committee’s views on the need for further essential safeguards to be written into the Bill?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am grateful to the noble Lord for asking a question which I am trying to answer as I speak. The Minister will have heard everyone around the Committee. I am sure that some of us recall what was once said by Archbishop William Temple in a famous lecture: “Whenever I travel on the Underground I always intend to buy a ticket, but the fact that there is a ticket collector at the other end just clinches it”. The Minister has heard the voice of a united Committee, and I am going to be pusillanimous and much criticised for my moderation in not dividing it. However, I do so as a friend and supporter of the coalition. Unless we get the amendments that have been asked for on all sides of the Committee, this Committee will act as the ticket collector rather than myself. If we are trying to achieve a constitutional Bill that we can pass, the right way to do that is not by flexing our muscles on Amendment 1 and proceeding on that basis.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Can the noble Lord explain the difference between the strength of feeling at Second Reading—which we agreed was very strong and very united, but not tested because of the protocols of this House—and the strength of feeling today? If I understand him, he feels that he has not yet been heard properly by the Government. Why does he think that the strength of feeling today is different from that on the previous occasion and, therefore, that it will be heeded on this occasion?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I do not think that it is different. If anything, it is stronger; but it is certainly as strong as it was on Second Reading. I am trying to consider how best to persuade the coalition Government, whom I support, to make these changes. I believe that we will have more influence by not dividing the Committee. Having said what I have said, I hope that noble Lords, except those who are dying to win a vote, will hold off for now so that we can come back quite strongly—
The Countess of Mar
Does the noble Lord appreciate that he might withdraw his amendment, but that the Committee might not agree that the amendment can be withdrawn when it is called?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I appreciate that. I ask noble Lords to consider that, if there were a vote, I would not be able to support it; and on that basis, I think it would be quite likely that, if my noble friends agreed with me, the vote would be lost. That would be a misfortune. I think it is much better that we stay united and that the Government listen to the Committee as a whole rather than that we play games at this time in the afternoon.
Lord Soley
I understand the noble Lord’s dilemma as we have discussed it before. If I were asked whether the Minister will try to help the Committee, I would answer yes, because I think that he really wants to. However, I do not think that that is the problem. I think the problem is that the Government have got themselves locked into a position where this Bill in its present form is necessary to them. I would like to lend strength to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and winning a vote would do that.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am grateful to the noble Lord, but in the end I have to form a judgment about how we as creditors, coming to the aid of the Government who need our support, can best produce a stabilisation grant that will enable them to do so at a time where there is this great difficulty. My judgment is that by being moderate today, we will have more credit for the future. If I am mistaken, I promise Members of the Committee that I shall not be able to be as loyal as I am today to the discipline imposed on us. Having said all that—and it is not a threat, simply a promise—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
In moving Amendment 2, I shall speak also to Amendment 181. These amendments would introduce a sunset clause to the Act, which would mean that it will automatically expire five years after coming into force. As a natural consequence, the powers of Ministers to make orders abolishing or fundamentally changing these bodies will also expire at this time. It was the Second Reading speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, and of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that made me reflect further on the wisdom of a sunset clause for the Bill, as did the first report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The effect of a sunset clause is to set a deadline for the end of this legislation in the event that Parliament decides to enact it into law. It is a prudent step in relation to this Bill.
My reasons for tabling the amendments are twofold. First, like noble Lords on all sides of the Chamber, we agree that many arm’s-length bodies play an important part in our public governance and public life. However, they must be effective and efficient and they must not be set in aspic. We must be able to improve and streamline them, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, said in our earlier debate. There needs to be a sensible alternative to the status quo, which is what the Labour Government were developing in our March White Paper. When we were in office we managed to cut the bodies which had come to the end of their usefulness—to which my noble friend Lord Warner can give testament—and we recognise that there must be a means by which this can be done. We do not agree with the Bill in its present form, but if we are able to amend it in an acceptable way, then, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and others, we believe that it would be appropriate to consider a Public Bodies Bill in each Parliament to enable tangible proposals to be put forward and properly scrutinised by both Houses. In this way, we will continue to recognise the importance of bodies being accountable not to the Government or the Minister of the day but to Parliament.
Secondly, I reiterate the sentiments of my noble friend Lady Andrews which she expressed so cogently during the debate on Second Reading. She said:
“We have a Bill that brings with it a threat of future changes that are as yet unknown either to the institutions identified or to the Ministers in place”.—[Official Report, 9/11/10; col. 86.]
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, observed earlier that this Bill places many organisations in peril. It is not appropriate to continue an indefinite threat to the bodies listed in any of the schedules to the Bill, and Clause 11 and Schedule 7 are particularly insidious. They are a feature of the Bill that noble Lords have quite appropriately labelled as “pernicious”, a “zombie list” and a “death row for quangos”. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, made another powerful speech today, as did the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. How can a body such as the Gangmasters Licensing Authority be on Schedule 7?
The Minister was asked repeatedly during the Second Reading debate what bodies were included in Schedule 7, what the rationale was and what the Government’s criteria were for establishing that status. The Minister did not answer the points during the debate but, understandably, he promised to come back at the Committee stage with amendments to address the concerns expressed. He has indeed tabled amendments, but none of them addresses the underlying concerns about why bodies are included in Schedule 7, or why they, their staff and the people they serve are made to live with constant insecurity. If the Minister was serious about the concerns—as I believe he was—he would have recognised more fully that the only way of addressing them is to table an amendment to delete Clause 11 and Schedule 7. He has not done this and the safest way to proceed is with a sunset clause, even if, as I hope, later in the proceedings the Minister either accepts the amendments to Clause 11 and Schedule 7 or the clause and the schedule are defeated.
It is not right and proper that the powers granted by the other schedules are left unchecked for Parliament after Parliament. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said at Second Reading that a sunset clause would hold the Government’s feet to the fire and ensure that they acted. I am sure that this is correct. It would also ensure that in each Parliament specific organisations are considered. I would hope that this would follow consultation and would not be out of the blue, but there would be an opportunity in that case for proper parliamentary scrutiny and debate, something which we are denied by this Bill.
I also wonder what consideration is being given to the many new quangos which have already been announced by the coalition Government. It may be that this Government or some future Government would wish to consider their viability in the long term, and it may be that a Public Bodies Bill in each Parliament would enable Parliament to address the viability of the bodies which are now being created.
I learned the value of sunset clauses from the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House in discussions before, during and after publication of its excellent report, Fast-track Legislation: Constitutional Implications and Safeguards. It took me a while, but I got there in the end and fully accepted what the Constitution Committee was wisely telling us. One of the reasons for a sunset clause in expedited legislation is that such legislation is, by necessity, hastily drafted. There is no necessity here for hasty drafting. The Government have given no clear reason why we are being asked to consider a Bill that has been so hastily drafted. Indeed, the Minister seems to have tabled an almost unprecedented number of stand-part interventions to oppose clauses of his own Bill. We all agree that a great deal of change needs to be made to the Bill and we shall be testing the strength and coherence of those amendments during the course of the debate, as we shall with our amendments and those of other noble Lords.
As has been said repeatedly today, the Bill fundamentally alters the balance of power between the Executive and Parliament with its “misconceived delegated powers”. It is sidelining Parliament by legislation. I recommend Amendments 2 and 181 as both reasonable and necessary so that we strike the right balance between accountability to Parliament and an ongoing public bodies review regime. I think the vast majority of noble Lords believe that it is right and proper to keep these bodies under review. I beg to move.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, these amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would have the effect of time-limiting the Bill for a period of five years following Royal Assent. After this time the Bill would expire and Ministers would no longer be able to make use of the order-making powers within it to make changes to public bodies. I recognise, as the noble Baroness did when presenting them to the Committee, that these amendments have their origins in the Second Reading debate and the contributions of a number of my noble friends explaining why they thought that a sunset clause might be a good idea. The Constitution Committee also suggested that in its report, as well as suggesting that the Bill’s order-making powers are broad and not balanced by appropriate safeguards and parliamentary scrutiny. That was its position.
The government amendments address these concerns. They protect the independent exercise of important public functions and give Parliament an enhanced role in scrutinising orders made using the Bill. In doing so, they provide great reassurance that both this and future Governments will use the Bill’s powers in the responsible and considered manner that I know your Lordships would expect.
By sunsetting the Bill as the amendments propose, Parliament would be denying the opportunity to use the Bill to make changes to public bodies following the five-year period. This seems to me a disproportionate response. I recognise noble Lords’ concerns about the Bill—and we have acted to address those concerns—but I also recognise the wide support for the policy intent not only in Parliament and among the general public but, indeed, on the Benches opposite, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said in her remarks about the need to review public bodies.
The Government’s preferred approach is to pass a Bill which allows the flexibility to make changes to public bodies quickly when it is in the public interest, but which also ensures the protection of important public functions and allows for full consultation and parliamentary scrutiny. However, there is a strength of feeling in the Committee that the Bill and the powers in relation to the relevant schedules should not be open-ended, and I must take account of that.
We could sunset in relation to the bodies in Schedules 1 to 6 at five years, as these relate to agreed proposals which will be implemented within that timeframe or, in the majority of cases, much sooner. However we accept that that is not noble Lords’ main concern, and that we therefore have to look again at the powers in Clause 11, which relate to Schedule 7. If it is not possible to provide the reassurances needed, we will have to look to the possibility of further primary legislation in five years’ time to effect any future reforms—and I am sure that noble Lords would look forward to the prospect of another Public Bodies Bill with great anticipation. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment so that we can consider my suggestions.
Lord Soley
The Minister now understands clearly—and probably has done from the beginning—that there is acute concern about the Bill. He also understands, which perhaps other people do not immediately understand, that there is a great deal of support for some structure or agreement on how we can reform these bodies. Is it not possible to perhaps come back to the House on the sunset clause and, in the mean time, talks could take place between the parties and the Cross-Benches on what would be a good model to bring before the House in five years’ time? We could end up with better legislation, even if it takes five years to get it.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for that suggestion. It is well intentioned and reflects a course of action which is open to the Government. At the moment, I believe there are ways of sunsetting within the Bill as it currently stands which might be used positively to enable the Bill to be used to better effect. I should like to use the time between now and Report to be able to discuss that, which is why I am asking the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. This matter has been raised in our discussions outside the Chamber.
Lord Adonis
Did I understand the Minister to say that the further conversations he would undertake with my noble friend would concern the possible sunsetting of the entire Bill? He elided his comments about some sections of the Bill with a comment that he would be prepared to discuss the sunsetting of Clause 11. I think that my noble friend’s concern goes considerably wider than Clause 11. Could he clarify what he is prepared to consider sunsetting?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am prepared to consider everything. I do not rule anything out, because that is the wrong way to approach discussions. I gave an indication, however, of the implications of different sunsetting. Sunsetting the whole Bill would mean that we would need another Bill in five years, if it was determined that that was necessary. Sunsetting clauses of the Bill is a different approach. I have also made it clear in my response to the amendment that the Government are looking at the interaction of Clause 11 and Schedule 7, and at whether sunsetting might help relieve some of the anxieties, well expressed across the Chamber, about those sections. I hope that I have been pretty open about where we are looking at sunsetting. I assure the noble Baroness that, should she withdraw her amendment, we would enjoy discussing this matter with her and other Members of the House who have expressed an interest.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response to my amendments. I think that he has said that he is willing to consider sunsetting the whole Bill as well as specific clauses within it. He is nodding his head, so I take it that that is so. I shall therefore not press my amendments. I look forward to discussions with the Minister and the Bill team. My noble friend Lord Soley suggested that we might try to do this on a whole-House basis. I realise that one does not have representatives from the Cross-Benches, but if we can ensure that someone from those Benches who is particularly concerned about this aspect of the Bill is present, together with somebody from the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives—because they would perhaps have different views—I shall willingly withdraw my amendment.
Controlling Migration
(14 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement made in the other place.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on immigration.
Controlled migration has benefited the UK economically, socially and culturally, but when immigration gets out of control, it places great pressure on our society, economy and public services. In the 1990s, net migration to Britain was consistently in the tens of thousands each year, but, under Labour, it was close to 200,000 per year for most years since 2000. As a result, during Labour’s time in office, net migration totalled more than 2.2 million people, which is more than double the population of Birmingham. We can’t go on like this.
It is our aim to reduce net migration from the hundreds of thousands back down to the tens of thousands. To achieve this, we have to take action across all routes to entry— work visas, student visas, family visas—and to break the link between temporary routes and permanent settlement.
On the work routes, all the evidence shows that it is possible to reduce numbers while promoting growth and underlining the message that Britain is open for business. After consulting widely with business and with the Migration Advisory Committee, I have decided to reduce economic migration through tiers 1 and 2 from 28,000 to 21,700. This would mean a fall of more than a fifth compared with last year in the number of economic migrants coming through tiers 1 and 2, excluding intra-company transfers.
Business groups have told us that skilled migrants with job offers, tier 2, should have priority over those admitted without a job offer, tier 1. I have therefore set the tier 1 limit at 1,000, a reduction of more than 13,000 on last year’s number. Such a sharp reduction has enabled me to set the tier 2 limit at 20,700, an increase of nearly 7,000 on last year’s number.
The old tier 1, which was supposedly the route for the best and the brightest, has not attracted highly skilled workers. At least 30 per cent of tier 1 migrants work in low-skilled occupations such as stacking shelves, driving taxis or working as security guards, and some do not have a job at all. So we will close the tier 1 general route.
Instead, I want to use tier 1 to attract more investors, entrepreneurs and people of exceptional talent. Last year, investors and entrepreneurs accounted for fewer than 300 people. That is not enough. So I will make the application process quicker and more user-friendly, and I will not limit the number of those wealth creators who can come to Britain.
There are also some truly exceptional people who should not need sponsorship from an employer and whom we would welcome to Britain. I will therefore introduce a new route within tier 1 for people of exceptional talent—the scientists, academics and artists—who have achieved international recognition or are likely to do so. The number will be limited to 1,000 per year.
Tier 2 has also been abused and misused. Last year, more than 1,600 certificates were issued for care assistants to come to the UK. At the same time, more than 33,000 care assistants who are already here were claiming jobseeker’s allowance. I shall restrict tier 2 to graduate-level jobs.
On intra-company transfers, we have listened to business and will therefore keep those transfers outside the limit. However, we will set a new salary threshold of £40,000 for any intra-company transfers of longer than 12 months—recent figures show that 50 per cent of intra-company transfers meet those criteria. This measure will ensure that those coming are only the senior managers and key specialists that international companies need to move within their organisations.
I thank the Migration Advisory Committee for its advice and recommendations. Next year, I will ask the committee to review the limit in order to set new arrangements for 2012-13.
However, the majority of non-EU migrants are students. They represent almost two-thirds of non-EU migrants entering the UK each year, and we cannot reduce net migration significantly without reforming student visas. Honourable Members might imagine that by ‘students’ we mean people who come here for a few years to study at university and then go home. But nearly half of all students who come here from abroad come to study a course below degree level, and abuse is particularly common at these lower levels. A recent check of students studying at private institutions below degree level showed that a quarter could not be accounted for. Too many students at these lower levels have come here with a view to living and working rather than studying. We need to stop that abuse. Therefore, as with economic migration, we will refocus student visas on those areas which add the greatest value, and where evidence of abuse is limited.
I will shortly be launching a public consultation on student visas. I will propose to restrict entry to only those studying at degree level, but with some flexibility for highly trusted sponsors to offer courses at a lower level. I will also propose to close the post-study route, which last year allowed some 38,000 foreign graduates to enter the UK labour market at a time when one in 10 UK graduates were unemployed.
Last year, the family route accounted for nearly 20 per cent of non-EU immigration. Clearly, British nationals must be able to marry the person of their choice but those who come to the UK must be able to participate in society. From next week we will require all those applying for marriage visas to demonstrate a minimum standard of English. We will also be cracking down on sham marriages and will consult on extending the probationary period of settlement for spouses beyond the current two years.
Finally, we need to restrict settlement. It cannot be right that people coming to fill temporary skills gaps have an open access to permanent settlement. Last year, 62,000 people settled in the UK on that basis. Settling in Britain should be a privilege to be earned, not an automatic add-on to a temporary way in. So we will end the link between temporary and permanent migration.
I intend to introduce these changes to the work route and some of the settlement changes from April 2011. I will bring forward other changes soon after. This is a comprehensive package that will help us to meet our goal of reducing net migration at the same time as attracting the brightest and the best and those with the skills our country needs. This package will serve the needs of British business. It will respond to the wishes of the British public. It will give us the sustainable immigration system that we so badly need”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and for clarifying the confusion caused by the misleading leak of the contents of the Statement to the BBC this morning—not the first time that that has happened.
I am sure that the Home Secretary is right to say that migration has made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the economic vibrancy, business strength and social vitality of our country. She is also right to say that it is essential that migration is properly controlled for reasons of both economic well-being and social cohesion. The question is: how does one achieve that? Over the past few years, the Labour Government put in place transitional controls on EU migration, a suspension of unskilled work permits, a tough but flexible points system to manage skilled migration, tighter regulation of overseas students leading to the closure of 140 bogus colleges, and new earned citizenship requirements for those seeking settlement.
At the general election, the leader of the Conservative Party proposed to go further in two key respects. First, he proposed a new target, reaffirmed in last week’s debate in the other place by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, to reduce net migration to tens of thousands by 2015. To meet that target, he pledged a cap on immigration which he said would be tougher than the points system. At the time, the leader of the Liberal Democrats said that they did not come up with promises like caps which did not work; he then agreed to the cap in the coalition agreement.
Since then the Government have been in wholesale retreat and today they are in some confusion. The CBI, the chambers of commerce, universities, Nobel prize winners, UK and foreign companies—large and small—have all highlighted the huge damage the Government’s proposals mean for business investment, research and job creation.
The Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place, and the Migration Advisory Committee, have highlighted that the proposed cap not only excludes EU migration but covers only 20 per cent of non-EU migration, with overseas students and family members being outside the cap entirely. At the weekend, the business editor of the Sunday Telegraph wrote that the Government’s “ill considered immigration cap” has had,
“the bizarre result of causing substantial problems for Britain's leading businesses whilst at the same time having only the most minor of impacts on the number of people actually coming to the UK”.
We have had the sight of the Prime Minister hinting at concession after concession in the face, we read, of opposition from the Home Secretary. But, then again, thanks to the excellent public lobbying and guerrilla tactics of the Business Secretary, the Home Secretary has now come to the other place to confirm the details of that retreat.
While we will need to keep a close eye on how our proposals will affect business and science, we certainly join business representatives in welcoming the decision to exempt intra-company transfers of workers. What has caused the confusion is this morning’s briefing to the BBC that the total cap would be 42,700 work permits. I understand that mid-morning the Home Secretary’s officials had to clarify to the Press Association that there is no such cap on that scale. My understanding from the Statement, as the noble Baroness has repeated, is that the Home Secretary will allow 21,700 tier 1 and 2 work permits, but with no cap on migration due to intra-company transfers. I ask the noble Baroness what the overall reduction will be as a result of the so-called cap announced today. If the number of intra-company transfers goes up, can the noble Baroness tell the House whether she will then put in place an offsetting cut in tier 1 and 2 permits? If not—and I know business representatives will very much hope that the answer is not—can she confirm that the supposed cap is in fact just a guess; a fig-leaf and no cap at all? This is a policy designed for an election campaign, but not suited to the reality of Government or the actual long-term interests of the UK.
Given her Permanent Secretary’s revelation this morning that her department will lose 9,000 jobs—the bulk of which will be in the UK Border Agency—is the Minister confident that she will have enough resources to enforce her migration policy and keep our borders secure?
On family reunification, the Statement had nothing new to say. No estimate was given to the House of how many fewer visas she will need to grant by 2015 to meet the Prime Minister’s target. On overseas students, we are promised another consultation and, again, with no estimates. Why is that? Could it be that the Prime Minister is simultaneously travelling to countries of the world, inviting students to come to Britain to study and the Business Secretary is telling our universities that they can live with an 80 per cent cut in teaching budgets because they can mitigate the loss with fees from overseas students? Is that the position?
I would also like to ask the noble Baroness whether it is still the objective of the Prime Minister and the Government to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015. I notice that in the Statement the goal was repeated but we no longer get the date of 2015. Can the noble Baroness reaffirm that the 2015 promise still stands? It is a simple question: is the tens of thousands pledge still binding by 2015?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I, too, listened to the debate in the Commons and I note that the Speaker did not admit the proposition that there had been a leak from the Home Office. I do not believe that there was a leak from the Home Office. This is not an instance that can be cited in that direction.
The noble Lord asked a number of questions—
Baroness Neville-Jones
I am glad that the noble Lord agrees with the proposition that migration needs to be controlled. I will deal with his points about targets. We do indeed stand by the target of cutting migration to tens of thousands by the end of this Parliament, and we believe that the UK Border Agency will have the resources to ensure that it plays its part in bringing about that conclusion.
As for whether the limits serve the economic interests of the country, I note that the Daily Telegraph wrote its article before the Statement was made. Since my right honourable friend made the Statement—which, I might say, is the outcome of consulting, not of confusion—the CBI has expressed its satisfaction with the new system, which it believes will serve the economic interests of the country. Therefore, I believe that neither the charge that we are not listening nor the charge that we are confused stands examination.
On the question of intra-company transfers, our objective is to ensure that companies can transfer the people whom they need. That is why we have not put a limit on intra-company transfers. We will monitor intra-company transfers and look at how the process for that particular category of people goes. For instance, if need be, we will look at whether qualifications such as the level of salary are needed for intra-company transfers. However, we do not intend to relate that particular tier to other tiers. It is clear that we take the view that, after consultation with industry, it is important that companies have that flexibility. That means that, in other areas, we will also look at the limits that have been set for the time being, as indicated in the Statement.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I ask the Minister to clarify a couple of issues regarding the paragraph about family members. The Statement says that from next week—although we are told at the end of the Statement that most of the changes will come in next April or soon after that—those who apply for a marriage visa will be required to demonstrate a minimum standard of English. Can she confirm whether that is about providing evidence that the marriage is not a sham marriage, or is that a completely separate matter? Does the Minister agree that English is best learnt in the country where it is spoken?
Secondly, does the Minister agree that there is a need for proper training and skills provision for some of those whom we may find it difficult to identify in future? The Migration Advisory Committee’s report rightly talks about the need for employers to provide training, but it also states:
“Some priority may also be required for limited migration into vital public services such as … social care.”
In the context of the reference to the care assistants who are already here, does the Minister accept that those who work in the social care sector need not just technical but—if I may put it this way—cultural skills as well? I say that having talked at the weekend to a trustee of a care home who tells me that Filipino care assistants have a much better idea of how to look after elderly people than, I am afraid, British people seem to have.
Baroness Neville-Jones
On family migration and language, I entirely agree with my noble friend that you best learn the language when you are in the country. We are not demanding anything more than the lowest possible level of competence by way of an entry requirement, but we believe that it is necessary to insist that integration and the ability to participate in society are objectives that everyone who comes to this country should share. We believe that the capacity to communicate in the language is an absolutely fundamental requirement.
On the question of carers and skills, we will monitor the whole issue of skills shortages. Clearly, it does not make sense for us to impose limits in areas where there are skills shortages. However, as I said in the Statement, caring is not currently an area where a skills shortage arises. Nevertheless, my noble friend makes a good point that, if there is a lack of specialist skills within the caring profession, those could fall to be considered under a skills shortage category.
Lord Tomlinson
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the advisory board of the London School of Commerce, which is a private sector college with highly trusted sponsorship status. I also declare my position as vice-chairman of the board of Anglia Ruskin University, which is a state university.
I broadly welcome the part of the Statement that deals with students because it avoids the major elephant trap, which has been around for quite a long time in higher education, of merely reiterating the mantra, “Public sector good, private sector bad”. That is wrong on both sides of the equation. Some of our universities are not particularly good, and some of our private colleges are extremely good. I think that the Statement more or less strikes the right balance, so I welcome it on those grounds.
The Minister is right to identify the number of students who come here to study at below degree level as a major problem, but what plans do the Government have to copy the best of the private sector in monitoring the continuous attendance of students at courses? At our college, we have brought to the attention of Home Office officials—we have invited them to come and visit—our system of digital identification, which gives us a link with students that means that it is not a surprise to find that all students are in attendance and we can be aware of their non-attendance within days rather than weeks.
Finally, given that the Minister’s department has been in consultation with the sector almost continuously for the past five or six years, does she agree that the consultation should now be concluded fairly quickly? What is needed in both the public and the private sector is a period of stability in higher education, so that institutions can recruit students in the knowledge that the students will be able to attend. The modern practice of public and private working in partnership should surely be able to continue unabated by fears about the ability to get visas.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s welcome of the general proposition that we have laid out.
On the noble Lord’s first point about the monitoring of educational establishments, including those that are in the category of highly trusted sponsor, there will indeed be monitoring. I think that monitoring is already in place for many schools that have had to register in order to be providers of English language teaching. The monitoring of attendance, of the qualifications awarded and of the compliance of the institution in meeting its obligations under its sponsorship arrangements will indeed be carried out and spot checks may occur. I think that all institutions will be on notice that their obligations need to be taken seriously. Of course, if institutions do not take those seriously, they will lose their sponsorship status.
On the noble Lord’s second point, we entirely accept that those who want to bring people into this country, whether for study or for employment, need to know where they stand. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that she wants to get through the next stage—clearly, a big block of migrant movement is by students, who are, at something like 51 per cent, by far the biggest category of migrants—as soon as possible. Progress must, if I may say so, be consistent with having a proper consultation on how to do that, but the object will be to conclude that consultation so that we can put in place a system—and a level—that is reasonable and that serves the interests of this country.
Earl Attlee
There is plenty of time. Let us have a Conservative and then a Liberal Democrat.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful. I am delighted that there is to be a consultation on students and I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to include me in that consultation as editor of the Good Schools Guide and let me know who else is being consulted. I very much hope that it will include all further education institutions, private and public. I regret the derogatory tone taken about that sector in the Statement; many good-quality institutions provide excellent courses below degree level, which are in great demand throughout the world. We should export a strong and large export industry employing many people in this country. I agree that it should have quality controls and that the previous Government were remiss in completely failing to install the sort of system that has just been talked about, but we should be positive about the sector and support it as there is a great deal of good there and a great deal of employment.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I think that that sentiment would be widely shared in the House. It is certainly shared in the Government. If the consultation that has just been conducted on the employment sector is anything to go by, the House can be confident that this consultation will also be wide-ranging and thorough. In this particular consultation with business, we talked to something like 30,000 individuals and had something like 3,000 responses, which I understand was a record for this kind of consultation, speaking to upwards of 1,000 employers. I lay that on the line because it indicates that we have been a listening Government and far from a confused one. We will do the same in other sectors.
Lord Judd
Does the Minister agree that we should not simply acknowledge the contribution made by migration to this country but, across the political divide, warmly thank migrants for the tremendous contribution that they have made to the well-being and health of this country? Would she agree, too, that some pretty crude contradictions are inevitable in an immigration policy? On one hand, we are committed to the principles of a global market and encourage the free movement of goods and capital and the rest; on the other hand, there is no free movement of labour. That is a fundamental contradiction in the theory of the market. Does that not make it essential that we consult across government with all relevant departments about the compensatory measures needed in development policy, international financial policy and international economic policy for this distortion in the market? While doing that, how far do the Ministers with immediate responsibility discuss with colleagues in DfID the implications of a policy that seems to give priority to those who arguably are the people most needed in their own countries to build up their countries’ economy and provide employment opportunities for a wider cross-section of their populations?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, it is historically well based to assert that migration has been extraordinarily beneficial to this country. We have had immense advantage out of being an open society. The noble Lord asks whether we could be behaving in ways that disadvantage countries that need to retain their own talent. That is a perfectly fair point that goes to the core of successful development policies—because we do not have successful development in developing countries in the absence of the talent that they need to lead. That is one of the many reasons why we need to break the link between allowing or inviting people to come here and benefit from our education system and possibly taking subsequent employment without using this as a route to settle down here and leave their own countries, where they might benefit their own communities. I take the point absolutely. The policy that we are trying to pursue and that will draw some in—and we wish to see them here—is not designed to deprive countries permanently of their leadership talent.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s indication that there would be a limit of 1,000 people from scientific, academic and artistic communities and in view of the fact that this country has a high reputation in these fields, is it not a little unwise to announce an inflexible figure? Can she indicate how many people falling into that category have been applying for permits to come into the country? What consultation will she make in future to ensure that the number is sufficient to enable us to maintain our reputation in these fields?
Baroness Neville-Jones
I am trying to find the figure. I think that I am right and, if I am not, I shall correct myself on the record later and write to the noble Lord. My understanding is that 700 are being issued in that category, so the figure of 1,000 is not an unreasonable estimate of what is likely to be needed in this category. Of course, it is entirely without the complication of sponsorship or other qualification. We have sought to respond to the points that were made about our need for great talent to come here, but also to the desire of those who wish to come and work in our global-quality institutions. We will monitor all these figures and, if they turn out to be wrong, I am sure that the Government will want to change the limits. The last thing that this country needs is to impose an immigration policy on itself that does not meet its social and economic needs and benefit the population of the country.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
The proposal on marriage is fine in principle, but my experience is that so often sham marriages can proceed and succeed because there is no check at the end of the period as to whether they are subsisting. What assurance can the Minister give on the rigour of the checks carried out at the end of the two-year period? Otherwise, sham marriages will continue and proliferate.
Baroness Neville-Jones
The noble Lord is right that there is a problem here. We are looking at a possible extension of the period during which a marriage would have to subsist for it to be demonstrated not to be sham. That means that we will have to monitor that to be the case. The announcements being made in context form part of a wider view of how we monitor those who are let into the country and their compliance with the conditions under which they were permitted to enter. In a different context, I recall announcing how we were going to monitor English language schools. That undoubtedly imposes on the immigration system an extra duty when ensuring that terms are being met. However, it will be made very clear to those involved that the penalties for failure to comply are very high.
Viscount Waverley
Could systems be put in place to record those departing UK shores? If not, when might that happen?
Baroness Neville-Jones
That is something that we are working on, but I cannot give the noble Viscount a date because I am not informed of the timetable, but it is certainly a UKBA objective that we record the outward journey.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, can my noble friend expand a little on the reference to Highly Trusted Sponsors, who might be allowed to offer courses at a lower level—“Highly Trusted Sponsors” having an upper-case H, T and S?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I fear we have another abbreviation. I am unable to give my noble friend a great deal of information, but two things are clear. There are already some institutions of extremely good standing that will, by definition, be given such a status and earn this soubriquet. Other institutions will be given time to qualify on the basis of their meeting the conditions of being a trusted sponsor. This involves being part of a reputable institution and having a record both of complying with the terms of the conditions and of being in a proper financial relationship when it comes to paying the necessary amounts for the sponsorship and visas of the individuals involved.
Lord Clinton-Davis
The noble Baroness said that too many students have been coming here to live rather than to study. Will she kindly say on what evidence she formed that view? In particular, can she indicate how many students of that character are doing that? Will she also outline the organisations or persons who have opposed or have reservations about the new regime?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot answer the third of those points. I will endeavour to investigate and see whether I can enlighten the noble Lord. I will write to him if that is the case. The abuse of study rights is pretty well documented. There were several cases last summer of organisations and institutions that were, frankly, bogus. They were offering places on non-existent courses to people who had come here with the objective of clearing off and getting employment. We know about this both in the educational context and in one or two terrorist cases. This is not a fiction.
There is also the question of those who may come here, first, as bona fide students but who then stay on and simply become part of the workforce. That is an abuse. On that score, something like 20 per cent of the students who entered in 2008 are still here. That was not the intention and should not be the outcome. Clearly this is neither a mythical nor particularly small category of individuals, and it needs to be controlled.
Public Bodies Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, for the convenience of the House, I should explain that today we split my original Amendment 3 into two. The reason for doing so is so that we can discuss the question of consultation separately from that of parliamentary scrutiny. In moving Amendment 3A I will also speak to Amendment 123.
I think we agree that consultation has to be a very important part of the process of dealing with the order-making powers that the Bill provides to Ministers. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has graciously acknowledged the concerns over the enormous discretion that the Bill seeks to give Ministers. The debate on consultation goes to one of the most important parts of the Bill. The amendments that the Minister proposes to move—and to which I am sure he will speak in this group—are very welcome as far as they go. They provide for statutory consultation and stipulate that certain interested parties must be consulted before a Minister can proceed with an order. The Minister must also consult any such persons considered appropriate, allowing for a wide and full public consultation or a more targeted approach, depending on the order.
As I have said, that is welcome as far as it goes in relation to Clauses 1 to 6. The problem is that it still leaves an awful lot of ministerial discretion in deciding whether there should be a full public consultation, and by what criteria a Minister should so decide. The Minister was very sympathetic to the last group of amendments in relation to the sunset clause. I hope he will also give my amendment sympathetic consideration. We are talking about an extraordinary range of powers being given to Ministers. We are also, in the list of organisations in each schedule to the Bill, talking about responsibilities of bodies that are extensive and, in many cases, impact widely on the general public. For that reason, there should be a clear principle in the Bill that, whenever an order is proposed by a Minister, the public should always be consulted. I hope the noble Lord will be sympathetic to that point of view.
I also ask the Minister to clarify one point in regard to his own amendments. In the helpful note of explanation that we received from his department in relation to his amendments, the point is made that there will be at least 12 weeks for consultation. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that and give a little more detail. In particular, will the 12 weeks encompass just the time for interested parties to comment, or could they also embrace the time taken for a Minister to respond to submissions or consultations? I would very much welcome clarification on that.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend. I very much welcome the Minister’s amendment but it is extraordinary that it was not included in the Bill initially. That reflects what has gone on in the review of public bodies. I declare an interest as chair of English Heritage and vice-president of the National Parks Association. In the time available there was not much opportunity for a public body to have a considered, sensible dialogue with Ministers. Many of the bodies that passed the three tests of independence, expertise and accountability are in Schedule 7 and do not know why that is or what will happen to them. It should be an absolute precondition that they, and the bodies identified in other parts of the Bill, are consulted about their future and the extent of the options being discussed.
In the course of the afternoon, noble Lords have raised their concerns in many different ways but the business of consultation goes far wider than that. It is a matter of basic courtesy that these bodies should be consulted, and that is what the Minister’s amendment provides for. However, as has been said, it is extremely important that people who are affected by the Bill and are nervous about the future of public bodies should have the opportunity to be consulted. I think, for example, of the National Parks Association and the national parks themselves which command such enormous popular support and are so important to many different communities, both regionally and nationally. They are in Schedule 7. If it was decided to move them into another schedule, the number of people affected by that decision would be legion. It would be a gross discourtesy not to give people an opportunity to be consulted. Many of the bodies in Schedule 7 are membership bodies and would want to take the views of their members into account. Indeed, their members would have very strong views. Therefore, there is a real issue here about the nature of the consultation, its extent and the certainties that we can count on in terms of public responsibility and consultation.
I very much echo what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has just said about the need to be absolutely clear. The Cabinet Office guidance on consultation is very clear—12 weeks is the standard recommended time. Consultation in itself does not allow a huge amount of scope to discuss such serious matters, especially if it is held over a summer, as it often is. We need to be given guarantees that full and proper consultation will be carried out that is not compromised by a Minister saying that he will respond in due course. I am anxious that we should be given those assurances this evening.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I should like to begin by expressing my appreciation to the Minister for having brought forward the new clause on consultation, which flowed directly from the debate that we had at Second Reading, in which concern was expressed about it. The Minister told my noble friend Lord Lester earlier that there would be further discussion on this matter at later stages of the Bill. Amendment 114 goes a long way to meeting the general requirement of public consultation. It would be helpful, and would attract the consent of noble Lords on all sides of the House, if we were given somewhat more specific indications about the time involved, although there are further provisions on that in Amendment 118. However, there remains an issue about the nature of public consultation. That matter was addressed by my noble friend Lord Lester in his earlier remarks and I was glad to hear the Minister respond positively to it. I note that an amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves, which has not yet been moved, contains specific proposals on how the Minister might indicate that he is seeking consultation and on the use of a government website. All these matters merit serious consideration. We should not regard provisions that are put forward as tokenism, and I do not for one minute imagine that that is the Government’s view.
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, I should like to press the Minister a little on the Government’s new clause in Amendment 114, with specific reference to consultation on matters which might be devolved or partly devolved, particularly forestry. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the way in which he responded to my request regarding how the Forestry Commission might communicate with Members of this House on factual matters. Through his offices and those of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, we have found a means of communication through the all-party group on forestry. Unlike most of the other bodies that we are discussing, the Forestry Commission is accountable to the Crown as opposed to the legislature, which creates a problem. The Bill does not refer to the Forestry Commission but, rightly, to the forestry commissioners. As I explained at Second Reading, the 1999 Act devolved certain aspects of forestry which are planned to revert to central control, and this creates a very complicated body.
The Minister made the point that if matters pertained to Scotland or Wales, there would be a duty to consult Scottish Ministers or Welsh Assembly Ministers. Should we consult Scottish Ministers or Welsh Assembly Ministers as opposed to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly given that we might have to find a statutory mechanism pertaining to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly to enable us to communicate with those bodies? I should like the Minister to give me an assurance—I am sure that he will give it to me if he can—that a mechanism will be found to enable us to communicate with the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group—Amendments 115 to 117, 128, 129 and 170 to 172. They are all amendments to the three government amendments that have been put forward. Noble Lords know what those amendments say and can judge my amendments accordingly. The amendments that I have put down are very much along the lines of the amendments that I usually put down on consultation. I listened—as, no doubt, did many other noble Lords—with great admiration to all the detailed legal analysis on Amendment 1. I congratulate the Minister on understanding it all. We are dealing with something much more basic now that I do understand and in which I have been involved all my life—that is, public consultation.
As my noble friend Lord Maclennan said, these amendments put more detail on to the principles set out in amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. The former states that,
“the Minister must conduct a public consultation”,
and the latter states that,
“the Minister must consult the public”.
That fundamental principle has to appear in the Bill. It is absolutely right that consultation should be with all the appropriate organisations, interests and individuals that the Government can identify. In addition to that, consultation has to be open and transparent. That means that anyone who wants to be consulted should have the right to be consulted. In other words, the definition of who is interested ought to be made by the people concerned.
The Government can never know who wishes to contribute in total and which contributions might be useful to them in improving what they propose, or in coming to the view that it is right or wrong. That principle is accepted in many areas, such as consultation over planning applications to a local authority. Local authorities all have a list of the people whom they automatically and systematically consult, such as neighbours—depending on what the proposed development is, people living within a certain radius of the proposed development or perhaps just people living adjacent to it. A whole series of organisations—some national, some local—also automatically get consulted. There is no problem about that; it is the kind of consultation the Government are talking about in the Bill. In addition, there is an open consultation. Traditionally, a site notice might be posted so that people who walk past can have a look and see that the application has been made. There may be newspaper advertisements in certain cases where the application is thought to be particularly important, or is specialist—applications for listed buildings, for example.
Probably universally now, an open invitation is put on the council’s website for people to put their views forward, and an increasing proportion of people do so that way. That is an open consultation—it is open to anybody to take part and the council has to consider those representations. It does not mean that the whole basis of local government collapses; it is just a normal part of the process. There is no reason whatever why the Government cannot accept that principle on the kind of proposals in the Bill, which are often far reaching. In many cases, the Government act in this way; they may have a specific obligation to consult certain people and bodies, but in addition they put things on websites and take account of what people say. However, that is fairly ad hoc at the moment; whether it is done depends on the people involved. The principle ought to be in legislation. The internet makes the whole process far easier. The idea of advertising in national newspapers, the London Gazette or whatever—nobody ever sees it—has been superseded completely. All the information can now be put on the internet via the Government’s websites and people can respond in that way, or write in if they wish to respond in that way. There is no reason why that should not happen.
My amendment is the standard one that I table whenever this kind of thing comes up in your Lordships’ House. I tabled it on the Academies Bill; we got a weak concession from the Government on consultation by school governing bodies proposing to become academies, which has turned out to be pretty feeble in practice. Consultation is not an option. It is essential and should be entrenched in the legislation. I can remember banging away on the same issue on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill and various local government Bills.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
The noble Lord has brought up a Bill of blessed memory to many noble Lords, including of course the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. Will the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, contrast the submissions that we received on the marine and coastal access path from organisations, including bodies listed in this Bill, with the position now? We have been overwhelmed with silence from those bodies. He may well share my concern about that. Officials in departments have clearly given the message to those bodies that they are not to say anything. The more I think about it, the more concerned I am about it.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I heard the comments made to that effect by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on a previous amendment. He is right; it is the only explanation I can find for the devastating silence. In some cases I have gone out of my way to try to get information out of various bodies that may be affected by the Bill; no doubt other noble Lords have too. It has been like getting blood out of cheese on one hand, and on the other there have been subterfuge-type conversations: “I’ll have the conversation with you, but don’t tell anybody, will you?”. That is not satisfactory. It would help if the Minister could give us all an assurance that any such instructions that have been sent down the line will be countermanded immediately, so that those of us who are interested in these organisations can get the information that we legitimately need for when we get on to the detailed amendments and discussions that we shall have on the schedules, quite apart from the debate on this amendment.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I doubt that the noble Lord will find any written instruction, but you do not need written instructions—you just need indications from officials that organisations that make trouble will find themselves in some difficulty. It is absolutely clear that that is the message that they have. I am pursuing this because it shows the chilling impact of the Bill. Any organisation listed knows that there will be repercussions if it makes trouble, and the Bill allows that. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, will give a firm indication from the Front Bench that the organisations listed are free and open to provide their views. I will make it my business to contact some of the organisations, and if I find that they are not prepared to give views to the Official Opposition I will take that up with the Government, because I regard that almost as contempt for Parliament.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, can I come in on the same issue? I have already been in contact with three organisations about which I have tabled amendments for later in Committee, to ask their views on being in Schedule 1, 2, 3 or whatever. Universally they have said to me, as they have to my noble friend, “We can give you our views, but for goodness’ sake don’t quote us, because that’s more than our life’s worth”. This is important, and I shall continue to ask in regard to my amendments. I share my noble friend’s view that, if we do not see a change before they are debated, it will be very serious.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, Her Majesty’s loyal and Official Opposition may be having trouble, but all Members of this House need to be able to get information. I go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere. This is partly about whether people can freely give their opinions, but far more fundamental is having access to information. We have to have it, and it would be quite wrong if we were denied it in relation to any of the organisations that are, or might be, included.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has taken me up a branch line on my amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just been talking, and I therefore automatically start thinking about railways.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I wish to make a brief comment on bodies not being brave enough to comment on what is in front of them. We have had some discussion of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. If your Lordships look at its website, you will see a printed comment by the chairman stating that he is very disappointed in this development. He goes on to say why he is disappointed and how he is going to behave in the interim—although he accepts that policy is a matter for the Government. While I take the points being made in various parts of the Committee, I hope we do not overstate this situation.
I am wearing my Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, tie, and I was happy to hear a comment from that organisation earlier this afternoon. There is a long way to go with the Bill. It is dangerous to say that the board of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will not answer a question. I suspect that it does not believe that it will be in Schedule 7 by the end of these debates.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I am tempted, once again, by a reference to the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. I referred earlier to my historic interest in it. I take my noble friend’s point. I had been wondering whether to make the same point, but the Committee ought to be aware that the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council is not in the same position as the organisations listed in Schedule 7—it is for the chop. Therefore, any uncertainty or question of avoiding the chop later does not arise. I personally think that serious issues still need to be considered in respect of the AJTC, as I indicated earlier, which will be the subject of a later amendment. However, to put it bluntly, as things stand, the AJTC has nothing to lose.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, one of the concerns that is so blindingly obvious—and this refers as much to Kew as to any other body on Schedule 7—is that the bodies listed on the schedule have no idea why they are on it. One of the reasons for their diffidence is simply that there is nothing for them to say, other than to open an opportunity for the Government to explore further action which may not be necessary, appropriate or positive, or in any way in the interests of the organisation. That is the real problem and why people are so inhibited about coming forward in relation to the Bill.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I speak to the Government’s amendments as well as the other amendments in this group. The amendments are all concerned with the mechanisms by which the Bill enables the Government to make changes to public bodies through secondary legislation.
The group includes Amendment 121, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lester and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and Amendments 3A and 123, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. In addition, it includes a number of government amendments and consequential amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to which he spoke with his usual eloquence. These amendments reflect the commitments that I made at the end of the Second Reading debate on 9 November with regard to consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.
In this debate, I will discuss in particular government Amendment 114, which relates to orders made under the powers in Clauses 1 to 6. Amendment 127 replicates this amendment in relation to orders made under Clause 11, and Amendment 169 has the same effect in relation to an order made under Clauses 17 or 18, to which the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, referred. We also intend to create similar provisions in relation to the powers conferred on Welsh Ministers by Clause 13, and we are in discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government about how best to achieve this.
I am extremely encouraged by the level of consensus that has emerged across the Committee. We are clearly more united than divided on what needs to be done to improve the Bill, and I hope to continue in that spirit through this debate. During Second Reading, the House clearly expressed its feeling that the types of change that the Bill would enable should be subject to a period of consultation with interested parties outside Parliament. In many cases, departments have already undertaken, or are undertaking, such consultation—including the Defra consultation on governance arrangements in English national park authorities and the Broads Authority. That consultation runs for 12 weeks, as of 9 November. Sometimes there is independent review, such as the Dunford review of the Children’s Commissioner. There are many such plans. However, in addition, we are happy to place in the Bill a requirement to consult.
Perhaps I may comment on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere. The forestry clauses relate only to England, so the issue of the devolved Administrations, Ministers or Parliaments does not arise. However, I guess that the reason why in many cases references are to Ministers rather than to Parliaments is that Ministers are in turn accountable to their Parliaments. This would be the normal way in which Ministers talk to Ministers, rather than Parliaments to Parliaments. I hope the noble Lord is reassured as regards the Forestry Commission.
Lord Clark of Windermere
On that specific point, the commissioners are appointed at a GB level. The Minister is quite right on that. However, once appointed, they then take over devolved responsibilities as chairs of the national committees of Wales, Scotland and England. Although the Bill applies only to England, I am a bit perplexed, because none of the commissioners is appointed specifically to look after England. There is a lot of work to be done in teasing out how we deal with this aspect.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I hope that when we come to those clauses of the Bill, we will be able to discuss this and make it clear. I am sure that that is what the Committee would wish. We will have an opportunity to go through this.
The question was raised about the timing of the consultation period. I reassure noble Lords that the 12-week period is a 12-week period of consultation. Amendment 118 covers the process after consultation and states:
“The Minister may not act under subsection (1) before the end of the period of twelve weeks beginning with the day on which the consultation began”.
That means that he cannot present a summary of representations received in the consultation before the 12-week period is over. I hope that noble Lords are reassured on that point.
We want to make the consultation effective. I hope that I can reassure my noble friend Lord Greaves on that. The Government have nothing to fear from being open on the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, went rather over the top with his allegation of a climate of fear across government. I would be prepared to take up any evidence on this that he presented to me. The probable reason that a number of bodies listed in Schedule 7 are not commenting on the Bill is that it is not necessarily the case that anything is going to happen to them. Within departments, any decisions will involve discussions before the public consultation period takes place. The precipitousness that the Opposition ascribe to the decision-making process does not give credit to the way in which the Government perform their public business. I am sorry that the noble Lord has not had critical comments from people in public bodies.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
It is not that I have not had critical comments: I have not had any comments.
Baroness Andrews
If it is the case that nothing will happen to many or some of the bodies on the list, why are they on the list? Why is there a list at all?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That comes back to the process. Schedule 7 lists those bodies. The review initiated by my right honourable friend Francis Maude, which was the subject of a Statement in the House that I repeated, placed these public bodies on the list because they were considered to be subject to a review process. They have been subject to a review process and will continue to be subject to reviews at three-year intervals. The justification for them being on the list is that they are not exempted from being on it by the special criteria laid before the House.
Baroness Andrews
I am grateful to the noble Lord giving way. It is very important that we have clarification. The bodies that went through the public review process were cleared as being independent, expert and accountable, yet they are in Schedule 7. The Minister has referred to a triennial review. This can take place automatically; in fact, I understand that those bodies have been informed that there will be a triennial review. The bodies in the schedule are not necessarily subject to triennial review; they could be reviewed for any purpose whatever. There is a distinction here and we need clarification.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Of course, it is intended that departments will review the bodies that are listed in Schedule 7; that is perfectly correct. However, they will do so through a process of discussion with those bodies. The noble Baroness is involved in a body that appears in Schedule 7. I trust that she is sufficiently confident in her own position and that of her organisation not to feel in any way intimidated. Certainly she has been particularly eloquent—and justifiably so—in many of the things that she has said in debate in the House. What I was saying to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was that he had overreacted—which was uncharacteristic because he is a pretty phlegmatic fellow—by suggesting that there was widespread intimidation across Whitehall on account of the Bill. I do not believe that that is the case. I would go so far as to say that most people involved in public bodies want to co-operate with the Government in building a more accountable public sector.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am also grateful for his suggestion that I am usually very calm. However, I have been concerned because I have made contact with a number of organisations, and while informally I can be told what their views are, they are clear that they do not want to make any formal representations. In the case of some departments, officials have made it clear that the department does not expect the organisation to make any public statement. I am concerned about that. I do not think I have gone over the top. It is very different from the normal process of legislation. We are all used to being inundated—sometimes it is overwhelming—by comments from stakeholders on pieces of legislation. The noble Lord has said that he will seek to investigate individual matters. If I can bring him cases, I will. However, the issue is that when organisations are concerned, they will simply clam up, and I am not in the business of fingering civil servants. That is not something that I would ever do. However, there is a clear view that departments have made it absolutely plain to the organisations listed that they are not to make representations. I express very great concern about that. The Minister may be prepared to reflect on it. It would be very helpful if it was known throughout Whitehall that these organisations were perfectly free to make their views known, and that there would be no recriminations if they did.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
It is quite difficult for government bodies to speak out against government policy. The noble Lord has been in government. I suppose that he is suffering from the realisation that in opposition things are a bit different.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
With great respect, perhaps we may go back to the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. We spent six happy months debating it. In that time, representations were received from a considerable number of public bodies. I am not sure if the noble Lord is right to describe them as government bodies; we should call them public bodies. Yes, it irritated me enormously—how I wished for something like this Bill, because then I could have shut them up. However, I could not, it was right that I could not and it was right that those bodies expressed their views. This matter cannot simply be dismissed. This is a very serious matter of constitutional practice. There is clearly a feeling throughout the public Bills land that people are not able to express their views publicly. That is a matter of legitimate concern.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Lord has expressed his point of view and I have given him the point of view from the Dispatch Box. It would be useful if he were able to provide instances that he feels show an abuse of government. I would be grateful to receive them.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I previously backed up what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, albeit in perhaps a slightly less dramatic way, but there is certainly some reluctance there. Is the Minister saying that if we meet that reluctance in the coming weeks, when inevitably we will want to get factual information out of organisations, we can say to people, “The Minister in the Lords, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, says that it’s okay for you to talk to us”? Can we use the Minister’s name in that way?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Heavens above, my Lords, I do not think that I can really be such a door-opener. What might we find? I say to all noble Lords that we have access to public bodies. Whether we are on the Front or the Back Benches in this House, we are capable of tabling Questions and we can find out facts. It is quite proper to do so if things are in the public domain. The Library is there to help us and, if we seek opinions, no doubt we all have contacts that we are able to use. I do not want this debate on the Bill to be stifled by ignorance but here we are talking about the consultation process that we are seeking to bring in through the Bill, once enacted.
Lord Liddle
One welcomes the steps that the Government are taking in the Bill to ensure that there is wider consultation, and the noble Lord’s Amendment 114 refers to the consultation that is necessary for the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6. Of course one welcomes this consultation, but with regard to the area with which I am particularly concerned—that of economic development—what sort of consultation will now occur on the Government’s policy of abolishing the regional development agencies, which are referred to in Schedule 1 to the Bill? To my knowledge, there was no consultation of any kind on that policy—indeed, rather the reverse.
Soon after the general election, we were told that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills thought that the regional development agencies should be saved, and there was a tremendous sense of relief about that in the regions, particularly in the north. Indeed, I am told that the Secretary of State said that to the chairman and chief executive of one of the leading regional development agencies in the north. Then, a few weeks later, it was suddenly announced in the Budget that these bodies were to be abolished. A few days later, a joint paper appeared in the names of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government saying that the Government had decided to abolish them altogether and were now going to set up local economic partnerships. However, what consultation has occurred, and how is consultation now to take place in the light of the proposed new clause in Amendment 114 that the Minister intends to introduce? I should be very interested to hear his reply.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
We are in effect debating all these bodies, as the noble Lord knows, and when we come to Schedule 1 there are amendments tabled—indeed, there is one in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—relating to the north-west, if I remember rightly. I notice that the Opposition have populated these amendments with suitable spokesmen for the regions. We will be debating that. Indeed, noble Lords should not forget that we will be debating it in the course of a piece of primary legislation. The political decision has in fact been made on the RDAs. Parliament has to agree to it but the political decision has been made. We are now talking about the process that will apply to future decisions.
Lord Liddle
I am sorry but that is not what the noble Lord’s Amendment 114 says. He is talking about a consultation process that applies to all the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6. Of course, I hope that during the course of our debates the regional development agencies—particularly those in the north of England—will be removed from Schedule 1, but there will still be no process of wider consultation, and we are going to be taking this decision with none of the normal consultation processes that one would expect when such a matter is before us. Therefore, I am still a bit mystified.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I have been passed a very helpful brief by my noble friend the Minister with responsibility for these matters, who happens, by chance, to be here at my side. She reminds me that the decision to close RDAs was in the coalition agreement; proposals for local enterprise partnerships to replace the RDAs were invited in June 2010 and a White Paper on sub-national growth—in other words, growth at a regional or local level—was published in October this year. Therefore, so far as concerns White Paper consultations, we are indeed in a period of consultation at this moment, and I suggest that the noble Lord gets about consulting it. Perhaps I can return to my comments on—
Lord Clark of Windermere
Perhaps I may try to clarify the position—and for once I am not talking about forestry or the Forestry Commission. The assertion was made by my noble friend Lord Hunt that certain public bodies—I emphasise “public bodies”, not government departments—have felt inhibited about expressing their views on this Bill. Is the Minister saying that if public bodies wish to make observations about the Bill, the Government are quite happy for them so to do?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am not in a position to say that because I do not believe that that is what public bodies exist to do. They do not have a brief to comment on government legislation. However, they do have a brief to comment on anything that might affect them in particular, and that is why they are perfectly entitled to be involved in a consultation process on matters that may affect them during enactment of the Bill and during the presentation of a statutory instrument to change their position within the schedules, which is what the consultative process identified in Amendment 114 is all about. I should like to be able to talk more about that. The government amendment—
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I am still having some difficulty in understanding the Government’s position and in knowing exactly to which policy the noble Lord is referring in this context. We all know from long experience that there are many ways of influencing public bodies, and one of them, notwithstanding this legislation, is to make budgetary decisions that impact adversely on them. The comprehensive spending review has led many bodies to anticipate budgetary changes which may well be adverse for them. In those circumstances, and given the determination of this House to ensure effective and proper consultation at every stage of legislation, would it not be helpful, speaking as a fundamentalist, if the noble Lord were to declare that public bodies do have the right to comment on matters affecting them and that inclusion in any schedule is a matter that affects a public body and may well impact on the discharge of its statutory functions?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sorry but I am not prepared to concede that. I think that it would take public bodies into the role of advocacy and campaigning, which is not really their function. It is up to Governments to make decisions about these matters, followed by a process of consultation, and to make quite clear that all public bodies are affected.
Lord Whitty
I declare an interest as the chair of Consumer Focus for a few more days. Does the noble Lord not realise that some bodies on the list were established in order to give their opinion to government and more widely, and that their future, or the future of the role that they currently undertake, is therefore of vital importance to government? What the Minister seems to be saying is pretty appalling stuff: that the injunction on public bodies not to commentate extends not just to them talking to newspapers or lobbying Members of Parliament but even to talking to Ministers and responding to public consultation about their own future. That seems to me to be pretty draconian. If that is the Government’s position, frankly, it is shocking.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think the noble Lord has got it totally wrong. I made it quite clear that any discussions concerning public bodies are a matter of consultation within departments and between departments and those public bodies. There is no question of inhibiting bodies in performing their proper function in relation to government, giving the advice which, by statute or by request, they are required to give to government. We shall be working closely with all public bodies in respect of these reforms. They affect people and their livelihoods and it has been beneficial for the Government to work with organisations. It is not the job of public bodies to lobby in relation to government policy.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, if that is where the line is, we understand it. Public bodies were set up primarily to administer policies which have been established by Parliament. Therefore, I still think that their inability to comment on policies pursued by government and others, or to inform Members of this House or another place of their opinion of the Government’s approach in this Bill, is a very severe inhibition of democracy. I think that is what the noble Lord is now saying. I understand that they can talk to their own departments and that they can respond in those areas, but if they cannot even inform Members of Parliament of their views, I think that is a restriction on the ability of Parliament to make a judgment.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, it would help me if the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would tell the House how he could be prevented from making his opinions known if he wished to make them known to anyone?
Lord Whitty
My Lords, as a Member of this House, I can say what I like. As an officer of one of the bodies covered by the Bill, the injunction is that I shall not inform or campaign, or lobby Members of Parliament about a view which that organisation has and, in this context, a view which it has over its own future. I think that is a pretty severe restriction and it is something to which this House may wish to return. I do not want to pursue it further, but I put down a marker now that this seems to be quite an interference of the normal process of parliamentary government.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, perhaps I may have one more go at this. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I have held positions in public bodies in our careers. If someone sent me that injunction, I would pay no attention to it.
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, perhaps I can give example of the Information Commissioner listed in Schedule 7. One of his specific tasks is to adjudicate on the actions of government in withholding or providing information. Therefore, he is independent. Is the Minister saying that if a Member of this House made an inquiry of the Office of the Information Commissioner or any other public body it would not be right for the Information Commissioner or the other body not to provide the factual information to Members of this House?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am not saying that at all. I do not suppose that any Member of this House will be able to say that they have had difficulty in getting that sort of factual information from public bodies or from government departments because that is a prerequisite of parliamentary responsibility, and I accept that. I think I should have made it quite clear that we recognise that it is beneficial for government to work with organisations and public bodies but it is not the job of public bodies to lobby in relation to government policy. I think that is a fair position to state and I think that is where the Government stand on this matter. If noble Lords disagree with it, fine, but that is the position that the Government take at the moment.
Government Amendment 114 echoes many of the proposals of my noble friend Lord Lester and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and of the Opposition Front Bench, but we believe that it goes further in some regards: for example, by stipulating a requirement for a 12-week consultation period, and by requiring Ministers to consult the Lord Chief Justice where a proposal relates to the administration of justice. I am pleased to note that paragraph 2 of yesterday’s report of the Delegated Powers Committee has welcomed this amendment.
I note the emphasis of my noble friend Lord Lester on the role of the public in any consultation process. In the same spirit, I note my noble friend Lord Greaves’s amendments to the government amendments on consultation, which would require that the Government publish a notice of the proposal to make an order under the Bill on the Government’s website and other places considered appropriate by a Minister, and to publish a summary of responses and the Minister’s response to them in a similar fashion.
I fully appreciate that in some circumstances, a public, properly publicised consultation in accordance with the Government’s existing code of practice will be appropriate. However, I also believe that there is a need for some flexibility here; it is important that the Government should be able to carry out proportionate, value-for-money consultations that minimise the burden on those consulted as well as on the Government. Indeed, such a consideration forms criterion 5 of the current code of practice on consultation, which was produced under the previous Administration.
Therefore, although I agree with the intent behind these amendments, in appropriate cases, I do not believe that they should be placed on the face of the Bill. The requirements in our proposed amendments mirror those in other legislation and do not preclude a public consultation in accordance with the Government’s code, if appropriate. It should be for Ministers to decide how to consult and for Parliament to hold them to account in this regard.
I hope, therefore, that noble Lords across the House will feel able to support government Amendments 114, 127 and 169, which create a parallel procedure for the other order-making powers in the Bill. I hope that, in the light of my comments, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment and to support the Government’s proposals when they come forward.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his extensive response to the points raised in the debate. On the general point, I think the question still arises as to whether it would give comfort if the words “public consultation” appeared in the Bill. I believe, and I would pray in aid the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Maclennan, that it would give reassurance if we could see in the Bill when it eventually leaves your Lordships' House some reference to public consultation. I am sure that we shall return to this on Report. I certainly acknowledge that the government amendments move us into a better situation. I am also very grateful to him for the point he raised in response to my noble friend Lady Andrews about the 12-week period, which encompasses the actual consultation with outside bodies and organisations. That is very reassuring.
On what public bodies can and cannot do, clearly I shall not be able to bring to him any evidence that officials have acted improperly because it is quite clear that what officials have been doing in departments is simply enunciating the policy that the Minister has laid down tonight which is, very simply, that public bodies should not comment on public legislation. I am gobsmacked because, frequently in debate, noble Lords opposite, when in Opposition, commented and quoted public bodies which have commented on legislation. Looking at the list, I can pick out organisations with which I have had some dealings: the Committee on Climate Change is not able to comment or the Environment Agency, or Ofgem, or the Health and Safety Executive or Natural England. Goodness me, how I wish Natural England—
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Natural England has been very keen to comment at certain stages of the legislation and the noble Lord is quite right to single it out. What I said was “comment on legislation”; I did not say that they were not in a position to comment on those areas of their responsibility. Of course, Governments set these bodies up with the idea of seeking their advice on these matters, but Governments have to have the responsibility for bringing legislation before the House and it is for Parliament to advise the Government through its procedures on what it thinks of the Government’s legislation.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in my remarks I very advisedly quoted public legislation. I think it is a very rum do indeed that the organisations listed are clearly not being permitted to comment on this legislation. This raises huge matters of concern. In fact, looking at noble Lords, it adds to the concern that we feel about this legislation. Clearly, we will return. I am grateful to the Minister for the amendments that he will move. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I think this might be the moment for the Committee to break. I beg to move that the House be now resumed and that Committee stage begin again not before 8.45 pm.
Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010
(14 years ago)
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Earl Howe
My Lords, the purpose of the draft Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010 is to protect patients and to support doctors to improve the quality of care they give. They require certain designated organisations in England, Wales and Scotland to nominate or appoint responsible officers and to support those responsible officers in carrying out their statutory functions. They give responsible officers statutory functions relating to the evaluation of a doctor’s fitness to practise. In England only, responsible officers will be given additional functions relating to monitoring the conduct and performance of doctors. The regulations set out the connections between doctors and the designated organisation relevant for them.
Under the regulations, responsible officers will have to be licensed medical practitioners with at least five years’ experience. However, this is a statutory minimum. In practice, organisations will want to appoint senior doctors with experience of the management of other doctors as their responsible officers. The responsibilities of responsible officers relating to the evaluation of fitness to practise include ensuring that the designated body carries out regular appraisals, establishing and implementing procedures to investigate concerns and, where appropriate, referring the doctor to the General Medical Council.
Under their duties to evaluate fitness to practise, responsible officers will make recommendations on individual doctors to the General Medical Council. The responsible officer will have to make a recommendation as the basis for revalidation when it is introduced. This will normally be every five years. In England, their additional responsibilities will include identifying any issues arising from information about conduct and performance and ensuring that the designated body takes steps to address any such issues. These functions will enable responsible officers to support doctors to improve the care they give at the earliest opportunity.
Most of the statutory functions are activities already undertaken by medical directors and staff. These regulations do not specify who will take on the role of responsible officer; rather they allow organisations to determine how the functions may best be carried out. In the NHS and independent providers, it is likely to be existing medical directors. Except perhaps in the smallest organisations, we would not expect responsible officers to undertake the tasks, such as appraisals and investigations, personally, but they will be responsible for ensuring that they are carried out appropriately. This will involve ensuring that their designated body has sufficient staff who are appropriately trained, whether in undertaking appraisals or in investigating concerns. The regulations also make provision for the appointment of an additional responsible officer where there is a conflict of interest or appearance of bias between a doctor and the responsible officer.
The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee has drawn these regulations to the attention of the House and I have no doubt that in the light of the Motion she has tabled, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, will wish to raise certain issues and concerns. I stand ready to address them, but in the mean time, I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Baroness Thornton
As an amendment to the above Motion, at end to insert “but this House regrets that the draft regulations may imperfectly achieve the policy objective of the introduction of a revalidation scheme in light of the Government’s proposed changes to the NHS administrative structure which will affect the operation of the revalidation scheme in general, and these regulations in particular”.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, as the Minister quite rightly suspects, it was a combination of the report of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee on 7 October and my concerns that some aspects of the statutory instrument as drafted need further explanation that caused me to put down this amendment to the Motion this evening. I think it is important to say from the outset that as one of the Ministers who guided the Health and Social Care Act 2008 through your Lordships' House with my noble friend Lord Darzi, I am very pleased that this Government are showing determination to push ahead with this agenda because at the heart of this legislation are patient safety and ensuring that all clinical professionals deliver high quality, effective and safe care to their patients.
I fully appreciate that responsible officers are integral to improving care, and the development of their role seeks to raise the already high standards of the overwhelming majority of professionals, but their job is to identify and swiftly deal with the small number of staff who are not able to meet those standards. The public, professionals and the NHS have a right to be assured that licensed doctors are fit to practice.
I have absolutely no desire to delay the important matter of implementing this legislation. However, I think that it is important that the secondary legislation does the job that the original legislation intended. The report by the Merits Committee raises some important questions in this regard, as do some of the important bodies whose membership will, as it were, be on the receiving end of the instruments.
I think that the regulations do a very good job of describing the duties of the responsible officer and, indeed, the connection between responsible officers and designated bodies and medical practitioners, and this leads me to my first set of questions. Part 1 of the schedule contains a list of designated bodies that includes at least two organisations that the Government intend to abolish: strategic health authorities and primary care trusts. I join the Merits Committee in its recommendation that the House seeks clarification on how the Government's proposed changes to the NHS structure will affect the revalidation scheme in general and these regulations in particular.
Since the 2008 Act, the UK Revalidation Programme Board—hosted by the GMC, which I thank for its briefing and comment on this matter—has been rolling out the reform in phased stages, including a number of pilot exercises which aim to produce a well informed and robust system. Can the Minister tell the House how the changes that have been proposed will affect the pilots and their results? For example, the published guidance says that the responsible officers themselves will be assessed by the responsible officer in the strategic health authority, so what will happen now? How will the Government overcome this problem? I anticipate that we can expect some further orders and, if so, when and will they too be piloted? If nothing exists in the structure of the newly reformed NHS between groups of commissioning doctors at local level and the NHS Board at national level who or what will perform this function?
At the time of the original legislation, we had considerable discussion about the GMC and its role in this matter and about not conflating its particular and important role as the independent regulator for doctors in the UK or, indeed, creating conflicts of interest. At the moment, it seems to me that the only body that would appear to have a structure between the very local GP consortia and the national board is the GMC. What is the Minister’s view of this? How will revalidation work under those circumstances?
I thank the Minister for forwarding to me the letter that his honourable colleague Anne Milton sent to members of the Delegated Legislation Committee in another place. In this letter, she addressed the changes of architecture to the NHS. However, I am afraid that I did not find her explanation very comforting. She says:
“The Government’s proposed changes to the structure of the NHS set out in the White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’, in particular the abolition of PCTs and SHAs, will not affect the majority of organisations designated under Regulations, including NHS and independent hospitals. These organisations need to start putting the systems in place that support doctors, and provide the information that demonstrates the quality of care they provide. Without this, there is a danger that doctors will be inadequately supported for the introduction of medical revalidation in 2012. I believe that the medical leadership and stability provided by having responsible officers in place will also be important during this period of change”.
Well, quite: the two bodies that can provide that leadership are being abolished.
I turn now to concerns that have been expressed by professional organisations, which particularly led the Merits Committee to say that,
“these regulations are drawn to the special attention of the House on the grounds that they imperfectly achieve the policy objective”.
When I was a Minister, I would have regarded that as the parliamentary equivalent of being put on the naughty step and given a detention at the same time. I think that the Minister needs to give some thought to this matter and to put his responses on the record.
The British Medical Association has said that the laying of the order is “premature”. Although I am not one for delaying these matters, the Minister needs to address its concerns. The Royal College of Surgeons has expressed disappointment that many of its concerns were not addressed in the regulation. It raised the issue of potential conflicts of interest to arise from the installation of responsible officers with simultaneous corporate board responsibilities—for example, medical directors.
The RCS seems to think that such officers might be torn between trust obligations and the professional role of the responsible officer. I am sure that the Minister will be familiar with the examples that these organisations have raised. How do the Government intend to avoid the revalidation recommendations becoming the tools of managers and trust management agendas, rather than matters relating to the compliance of GMC and Royal College standards? Will the Minister confirm that it is the responsible officer’s responsibility to examine the doctor’s clinical ability and professional conduct, not his contribution to the meeting of trust budgets or targets? On this matter the regulations appear to be silent. Perhaps the Minister will expand. The RCS has expressed particular concern about the failure to incorporate whole practice appraisal in these provisions. I think that the Minister needs to give the House an explanation and reassurance about the need for the comprehensive protection to which patients are entitled.
On indemnity, will the Minister confirm how the Government will approach the issue of the potential increase in contributions for medical directors who take on the role of the responsible officer?
Finally, the GMC has expressed concern about appeals and that there is a significant omission of local appeals systems. The GMC fitness to practise processes should not be both the first and the last resort for appeal. There should be a viable appeals structure that flows up to fitness to practise. The British Medical Association says that in some organisations progress has been slow in demonstrating the capability to pull together the necessary data to actualise the new system. It says that appraisal has been patchy and disjointed in many organisations, and that that is quite aside from getting around to supporting any appeals system that may arise. I have raised several issues and I suspect that other noble Lords will seek clarification on the various other issues. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, we all know the sad history of this, through Shipman, which has led us to where we are today. I do not want to block these reforms because they will improve medicine for patients and for clinicians. But there are some questions which need to be sorted out urgently. One question is the role of the responsible officer in relation to doctors in primary care, particularly with the reorganisation.
In his opening remarks, the Minister spoke about trusts, but I would suggest that hospital practice is very much the easy end of it. The difficulty is where will doctors in primary care sit? How will the responsible officer work in relation to them? Where will academics sit and who will be the responsible officer, because there is sometimes a conflict, as has been pointed out, between academic priorities and the clinical priorities of a trust where that doctor may have an honorary contract? Even more, what about locums? What about the doctors who are constantly moving around? How will they be captured in the system? How will they be adequately and appropriately revalidated? Even with what used to be called 360 degree appraisal—that is, getting opinions from a lot of people—with locums there is a real danger that they will only spot their friends to fill out the forms because they may have had lots of contacts. Those concerns may never be sufficiently in the system to be raised before such a doctor moves on.
There is also a difficulty for those who raise problems. It may be that the doctor who is seen as the sand in the shoe of the trust, the difficult person, is raising real concerns about the way in which management is conducted, which is impeding good patient care. We know that one of the biggest problems is attitude. Often, the biggest problem encountered is not about the ins and outs of technique, because you can retrain on that quite quickly, but is about someone’s attitude. Someone who is whistleblowing, someone who works in the same organisation—I hate to use the term “whistleblowing”, because it is a sad reflection of the NHS as it is today that that term is around—and raises concerns should not in any way potentially be penalised for doing so. We would just go backwards and not forwards if that is the case.
Given that the majority of doctors are doing a really good job and are very flexible and going through changes, the system that comes in must not be too onerous. It must not be just a tick-box exercise. It has to be subtle enough to pick up real issues around performance and attitude. It has to pick up qualitative feedback, so that a bad attitude is detected, including a bad attitude towards patients.
As regards the responsible officer, I am afraid to say that I am sufficiently old-fashioned to think that I would prefer the minimum time after qualification to be a bit longer. It is not until someone has been practising for about 15 years that they really have accrued enough wisdom to be able to take on what will be a very onerous and potentially important role in relation to their colleagues. We need them to have a degree of wisdom. The appeals system is absolutely crucial if this is to work well and fairly. I hope that the Minister will give us a full reply in his response.
We also must be clear that the system will not pick up another Shipman. This is a clinical system and not a criminal justice system, so no one should be fooled into thinking that it will. Dame Janet Smith pointed out two things. First, the most important information about patient safety is doctors watching other doctors. They have to be able to raise concerns easily. Secondly, a good clinical governance system is a system in which questions can be raised at an earlier stage and more readily. So it is the whole system of the NHS with good clinical governance that will make this work. I hope no one thinks that just having responsible officers putting in appraisals will do the job because that will be a wallpapering exercise.
However, my main concern relates to primary care and to financial conflicts. In a privately managed organisation there may well be a conflict between what is actually in the patient’s best interest and what is being put forward as the protocol in that managed care programme. It may well be that the doctor is working in the patient’s best interests, but not in those of the organisation. Again, there has to be a degree of neutrality among the responsible officers. I hope that the Minister will be able to give replies to all these concerns, and like other noble Lords, I look forward to his response.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I declare an interest as having been president of the General Medical Council from 1982 to 1989. I know that the GMC is particularly anxious to see these regulations go ahead because the whole question has been smouldering away for very many years. Even during my presidency, we were aware that many doctors who came before the conduct committee of the council, or before that the disciplinary committee, were not so much erring or wicked as actually not practising, in some respects, to a standard of competency appropriate to today’s world. For that reason, we tried very hard to set up a mechanism within the GMC to establish what we called at first a competence committee. However, it was not successful because we could not persuade the profession and other bodies to approve some of the recommendations that we tried to put forward.
Subsequently, the GMC embarked on a programme of performance review. Mechanisms were established to identify doctors who were not performing to an adequate standard in the health service and other bodies, but that programme too did not succeed as well as it might. It was perfectly clear that it was crucial to the interests of the public at large and of patients themselves that there was a mechanism whereby doctors would be required every five years to subject their clinical performance and performance in their appointment to a process of validation. Revalidation then became one of the essential priorities for the General Medical Council. As the noble Earl said in his introduction, the GMC believes that implementing this process of revalidation is an essential step in advancing the quality of medical regulation, improving patient safety and providing patients with greater assurance that doctors are meeting the standards that we set for the medical profession.
I appreciate to the full some of the anxieties expressed by the noble Baroness. She has criticised the nature and content of these regulations. However, as I have said, this mechanism has been smouldering away for over 20 years and it is time to make progress. The statutory basis for the responsible officer is set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2008, which amends the Medical Act 1983. The GMC is now committed to the introduction of revalidation for doctors in order to change the way in which all doctors in the UK are regulated. Under this process, to retain their licence to practise, doctors need to demonstrate to the GMC every five years that they still meet the appropriate professional standards and are continuing to develop their skills and knowledge.
The responsible officer will be the link between the local healthcare organisation, whatever it is, and the GMC, and as such will be an essential component of implementing revalidation. The responsible officer will usually be based in and employed by the organisation for which the doctor works, or with which the doctor is contracted to provide services. The GMC will need to be confident that the recommendations it receives are robust, fair and consistent, but that the process leading to the recommendations and the recommendations themselves will be subject to quality assurance and to audit. The GMC will develop guidance to assist responsible officers in carrying out their role in relation to revalidation.
We have reached a stage at which it is crucial that responsible officers are in place before the rollout of full revalidation commences. This will have the advantage of enabling the GMC to identify gaps in the coverage of responsible officers, particularly of doctors working outside the National Health Service, and to make provision for them. In its response to the government White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, the GMC comments that the abolition of PCTs and strategic health authorities, which is not expected until 2013, leaves it unclear as to where the responsible officer role in primary care and sometimes in specialist care will sit, and how the role and functions of the medical directors will be exercised. As the noble Baroness said, this matter needs to be resolved, but it must not be a reason to delay the passage of these long-awaited regulations or to stall preparations more generally. The GMC has confirmed that it will work with the Department of Health to resolve this and other issues so that it can continue to make progress towards the implementation of revalidation. I trust that the regulations will be approved.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I concur with the comments of my noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant. It is important that we allow these regulations to pass. As he has said, the issue of revalidation has been smouldering away, to use his words, for many years. I recall from when I served on the GMC over eight years ago that the revalidation issue predates Shipman and has nothing to do with that issue. As my noble friend has said, this is a process and it is important that the regulations should be passed because we need the responsible officers to be appointed pretty soon so that the GMC can train them up and identify any issues before the process of revalidation begins. I understand that all the devolved Administrations have agreed that it should start by autumn 2012. If that deadline is to be met, we need the responsible officers long before that.
My conversations with officers of the GMC suggest that the council is well aware of the concerns raised. They know that when the legislation to reform the NHS is brought forward, the issue of what happens in primary care with doctors working as commissioners, and how they are to be revalidated, will have to be addressed. They are confident that they will be able to do so.
As for the other professional organisations that have also commented and to which the noble Baroness referred, it is interesting that only one has raised concerns; the others have not. All the other royal colleges have been involved in working with the GMC to identify how revalidation will be carried out in their own specialties and they are satisfied with the mechanisms that will be used. They are also satisfied that the pilots that are now being carried out will identify the issues.
It is important that we now approve these regulations and allow the responsible officers to be appointed. We will have other opportunities to debate the matter again during the next stages.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, it is always difficult when new Governments come into place and want to make important and sometimes radical changes to structures and arrangements while, at the same time, valuing some of the work that had been begun but not completed by a previous Government. As other noble Lords have said, the previous Government, and perhaps even an earlier one, moved towards revalidating doctors. This is a very complicated and difficult issue, but the Government moved in that direction; timetables were set but became a little delayed. However, if the Secretary of State in this new Government were to take the advice that has been proffered—that until PCTs and strategic health authorities are set aside and the new arrangements are in place we should not move to the appointment of responsible officers—we would be looking at 2014 or 2015, or after the next general election, before we could move forward. It is understandable that people should quite reasonably say that there is a dilemma here, but we must try to keep up the momentum, which is the point that the GMC has made.
It is perfectly correct that a number of matters are not yet clear and resolved. Some affect me, and I shall advert to them in a moment. The proposals for the reform of the NHS have not worked through the process—they have been announced but are not yet through Parliament—and it is not only possible but almost certain that there will be significant changes and developments. I hope my noble friend will be able to clarify some of the issues, but it would be expecting rather a lot for him not only to clarify how matters stand at the moment but to predict how they might stand further down the line when some things may have changed.
In the present situation, in most cases but not all, appraisal processes are already going on. Up until earlier this year, every year I produced a huge lever arch file containing details of all the things that I had been through. So the process is already in place and it is the responsibility of medical directors in trusts to make sure that it is in place. However, they cannot possibly carry it through themselves because so many need to be appraised. They therefore have to devolve the responsibility for the detail and the face-to-face work to someone else. Exactly the same thing will happen to the responsible officer.
Are there potential conflicts of interests? There already are because those who are responsible for the appraisals are also responsible for clinical merit awards of various kinds, for the recognition of a person’s work and for the creation or demolition of their clinics. All these conflicts are already there. That is not to set them aside and say they are unimportant—they are very important and very difficult—but we are facing something that is not in itself radically new but a problem with which we have been struggling for quite some time. Further orders may well come subsequent to this that will help to take the matter forward, but that does not mean that we should delay the current regulations.
Let me put to my noble friend a dilemma of my own on which he may or may not be able to help. What will happen to those who do not necessarily operate all the time only in the NHS in England, Scotland and Wales? I note that Northern Ireland is not included in this and, of course, the movement backward and forward between this part of the world and the Republic of Ireland is substantial. What happens if a doctor qualifies and works here for a while, then goes to work for three or four years in the Republic of Ireland and then comes back to work in the United Kingdom but the process of validation has not operated in quite the same way? Of course, we have free movement not only in these islands but throughout the European Union. What happens to those who have operated outside the UK? These are real dilemmas that have to be dealt with.
We have often heard it said that it is better to start, pilot and work your way through than to produce something that has not been tested out but is a fiat—a fait accompli. My noble colleagues on the Cross-Benches have expressed reasonable concerns and a determination to keep up the momentum for revalidation. In supporting these regulations, that is also very much my mindset, and I hope to see further developments over the next year or two.
Lord Rea
My Lords, I simply report that the two professional organisations to which I belong, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA, basically support the regulations. That is in spite of some doubts about the timing and some of the other points that noble Lords have raised today. It is good that responsible officers will be appointed before the detailed work of setting up the revalidation process is completed. They will play an important formative role before later acting as scrutineers or umpires—I hope not inquisitors—in the revalidation process. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s response to the cogent questions that my noble friend and almost all other noble Lords have raised.
Lord Kakkar
My Lords, we have heard that the key priority of the General Medical Council for patient safety and ensuring continuing standards and confidence of the public in regulation is the process of revalidation. We have heard in the Chamber today very strong support for the regulations.
The early appointment of responsible officers is critical. It will ensure that the system can be tested. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, was absolutely right to raise the structure in which responsible officers in the area of primary care will eventually be able to operate, but this matter can be dealt with when the health Bill is laid before Parliament and the primary care structures in it can be appropriately scrutinised.
As we have heard, if the regulations are in any way derailed at this stage, there is a danger that the whole momentum of revalidation will be disrupted. It could cause anxiety in the profession and lead to unhelpful pockets of resistance. There is now an ideal opportunity for a mechanism and the early appointment of responsible officers to test potential systems and determine where the weaknesses are. This will occur before revalidation comes into force in its fullest form, and will therefore allow the General Medical Council to respond appropriately. I add my voice to those of many noble Lords in supporting the regulations.
Lord Colwyn
My Lords, although the principles behind revalidation, which aims to raise confidence in clinical standards, are welcomed, there are concerns over the ways in which the Department of Health plans to implement the process through the responsible officer regulations. There is also concern about the new regulations coming into force in January 2011, given the proposals in the recent health White Paper to abolish structures that were intended to support the role.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that the demands of the role outlined in the proposals will require a person of quite exceptional skills and competences. It is assumed that many medical directors will become responsible officers, which will significantly extend their role by extending their responsibility, powers and workload.
There is already a marked variation in the abilities of medical directors to investigate performance concerns and implement local disciplinary procedures. The additional duties are likely to be onerous. It is not certain that senior doctors with the necessary professional standing will be willing to take them on, or that it will be possible to find senior doctors with the necessary standing and experience to succeed in this role.
It is essential that adequate resource is allocated to support responsible officers and that they are appropriately equipped to carry out their responsibilities. The guidance to the draft regulations emphasises that there must be a “robust” medical management infrastructure to support the responsible officer and sufficient delegation of duties to enable the role to be delivered to a high standard. How will this work in practice and how will it be resourced?
The draft regulations do not reflect the changes proposed in the White Paper. Reference is made throughout to “designated bodies”. These include PCTs and SHAs, which are to be abolished by 2013. There is no detail on what structures will support responsible officers, revalidation and other aspects of performance management in primary care after 2013. This makes the decision to press ahead and appoint 975 responsible officers to strengthen systems in structures that are to be abolished difficult to understand. Surely, given the decision to delay revalidation and the uncertainty around the structures that will support performance management, more time is needed to pilot and evaluate the responsible officer system effectively before bringing these measures into force in January.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. In particular, I welcome the positive comments made about the regulations and the rationale for them. I am grateful especially to the noble Lords, Lord Walton, Lord Patel and Lord Kakkar, and my noble friend Lord Alderdice for their strong support and very helpful comments, and indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Rea, for what he said. A number of questions have been asked and perhaps I could begin by addressing the timing of these regulations.
First, I know that medical revalidation was a concern of the Merits Committee, reflecting in turn the concerns raised by the BMA and the Royal College of Surgeons. Noble Lords who are medically qualified will be aware, and other noble Lords may well be aware, that the piloting period for revalidation has been extended for a further year. This will allow time for a better understanding of the costs, benefits and practicalities of implementation and to enable full engagement with the profession, the service and the public. Despite there being issues which the extended period of piloting will help us address, one thing remains clear; recommendations on an individual’s revalidation can be based only on substantiated information. That information will come from doctors themselves, supplemented by information from an organisation’s clinical governance systems. The responsible officers’ roles, in other words, are wider than the process of revalidation. It is important that we have those officers in place to implement improved systems of clinical governance and to ensure that organisations are prepared and doctors are supported, ready for revalidation.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, was right; having responsible officers in place would help to ensure that doctors are appraised and that systems are in place that will enable the information to be collected and shared as appropriate, such as when doctors move to a new organisation. Where there are concerns, their duties will ensure that the appropriate action is taken, and will continue to be taken, so that patients are protected. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, also argued that the regulations had been overtaken by the Government’s proposed reforms of the NHS. It is worth re-emphasising what my honourable friend Anne Milton said in her letter: that the majority of organisations designated under the regulations will not be directly affected by the removal of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, which of course has not yet happened and is still some distance away. Clinical governance systems are needed regardless of the White Paper proposals.
Now is precisely the right time to introduce the role of responsible officer. I simply repeat that medical leadership and stability are needed if organisations and their doctors are going to be ready for revalidation when it starts.
Of course the regulations will in due course need to reflect the changes in NHS architecture, should those be agreed by Parliament. We are currently exploring options for this and I can repeat the assurances given by my honourable friend Anne Milton in another place. To answer in particular the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, about primary care, we will consult on options for responsible officers within primary care as we move to a system of commissioning consortia, and on identifying a responsible officer’s own responsible officer, who in England currently sits within the strategic health authority, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, rightly pointed out.
The noble Baroness also reflected professional concerns about conflicts of interest between a responsible officer’s statutory duties and their duty to their organisation. All doctors who have a management or supervisory role for other doctors already manage on a day-to-day basis any tensions that may arise between the need to ensure high professional standards and values on the one hand and the needs of employers and service provision on the other. Medical directors already address concerns about doctors in their organisations, whether through local performance management, disciplinary systems or referrals to the GMC. The Government believe that, in the vast majority of cases, medical directors will be guided by their professional values to manage such issues fairly and in the best interests of patients. The alternative—an entirely independent structure of responsible offices in every healthcare organisation in the United Kingdom—would replicate the system of GMC affiliates, which was proposed, as noble Lords may remember, in 2007, and which professional bodies rejected during consultation as being disproportionate, impracticable and unaffordable.
I also draw the House’s attention to the evidence given to the Health Select Committee on 4 November 2010 by Professor Peter Furness, who is president of the Royal College of Pathologists and revalidation lead for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. Professor Furness acknowledged the potential for a conflict of interest, but he also said that the view that medical directors should not be responsible officers was held by “a minority” of medical royal colleges. He observed that the potential for conflict could be balanced by the fact that medical directors are best placed to resolve any problems that might arise. He also thought that the potential for conflict needs to be addressed by “open processes” to ensure that it does not cause problems.
We must also remember—this is a fundamental point— that responsible officers can make recommendations only about a doctor’s fitness to practise; they do not have the power to remove a doctor’s licence to practise. Their recommendations must be based on evidence, and it should be clear immediately if that is not the case. Further, if responsible officers make recommendations that are not based on evidence, they may be failing in their duties under good medical practice, which requires that doctors must,
“be honest and open and act with integrity”.
In that case, responsible officers could even bring their own fitness to practise into question. These are very serious issues for any responsible officer.
The Merits Committee’s concern that the regulations provide for no process of appeal against the recommendation of a responsible officer has also been raised by noble Lords. First, let me stress that the regulations will result in no change to the current situation, in which every doctor, including the medical director, has a professional duty to report serious concerns about another doctor to the GMC. Under the regulations, the responsible officer will be required to decide what recommendation to make to the GMC about an individual doctor’s fitness to practise. However, the GMC would then need to go through its own processes, which provide the doctor with an opportunity to defend allegations—including through an appeals mechanism—before the doctor can be considered unfit to practise. Under the regulations, local procedures to investigate concerns must provide for a doctor’s comments to be sought and taken into account.
In England, as part of the responsible officer’s role in dealing with concerns about a doctor’s conduct or performance, the responsible officer will also be able to recommend suspension to the designated body. However, the decision on suspension is for the designated body and should engage that organisation’s performance management and grievance procedures. I think that sufficient mechanisms are already in place that protect the doctor’s interests without the need to create an additional bureaucratic structure to allow doctors to appeal against what are, after all, simply recommendations.
Two further issues were raised by, I think, the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Finlay. The first relates to a failure to specify that appraisal should encompass the whole of a doctor’s practice. That is in fact provided for in Regulation 11(3), which states:
“The responsible officer must ensure that appraisals … involve obtaining and taking account of all available information relating to the medical practitioner’s fitness to practise in the work carried out by the practitioner for the designated body, and for any other body, during the appraisal period”.
Nevertheless, I repeat the assurances given in another place that we will consider whether we can strengthen the guidance to make it clearer that appraisals must address the whole of a doctor’s professional practice.
The second issue relates to indemnity and, in particular, to the fact that organisations should provide indemnity for responsible officers. Indemnity payments are already calculated on the basis of a shared risk. At this stage, we understand from the medical defence organisations that there is no suggestion that the contributions from those who take on the responsible officer role would need to rise. However, we are told that the medical defence organisations will keep the situation under review. I assure noble Lords that, if we find contributions rising as a result of these regulations, we will review the position.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
Will the Minister clarify that the way in which the regulations are written is sufficiently flexible to allow a doctor to take a career break, to move into a different area or to take a break from clinical practice as it currently stands? Are they also sufficiently flexible to allow the responsible officer role not to be tied to the medical director of a trust, but if the medical director of a trust resigns from that post but is very suitable to remain the responsible officer, they can remain the responsible officer and the medical director can be someone else? Furthermore, are they sufficiently flexible to allow you to be able to get rid of a responsible officer if it turns out that they are not being wise enough?
Although this is slightly irregular, I should point out for clarification that I am not against these regulations at all—I think that they need to go through. My concern about five years is that most doctors are still in training at that stage.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the answer to the first question of the noble Baroness, about career breaks and so on, is yes, the regulations allow for that. In answer to her second question, we are not specifying that responsible officers have to be medical directors. As she knows, we are leaving it up to the organisations to decide that. Therefore, she can be reassured on her other questions.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for contributing to this debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, and my noble friend Lord Rea. I also thank the Minister for his comprehensive answer. Noble Lords will have heard me say from the outset that I did not intend to delay the implementation of the regulations. However, noble Lords should also acknowledge that if we ignored the reservations expressed by the Merits Committee and various medical organisations, and did not to pay heed to what they had to say about this, we would not be carrying out our duty of scrutiny. I thought that the most important thing was to get on record the answers to the very questions that we have raised.
I thank the Minister for his usual comprehensive and competent answer, which helpfully addressed many concerns. The abolition of PCTs and strategic health authorities is on the “wait and see” bit of this agenda. We can take it that the Department of Health has not yet worked out what it is going to do. I take some comfort from the fact that this, like much else, is in the melting pot of what is becoming the NHS at the moment; it is work in progress. With that and with thanks, again, to the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment to the Motion.
Public Bodies Bill [HL]
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, we are very much making progress as we reach Amendment 3B at quarter to nine tonight. This is an important amendment, and with it I speak to my Amendments 120, 124 and 125.
In view of all our discussions I think that noble Lords will agree that, when it comes to a Minister deciding to bring an order before Parliament, the information made available to Parliament and the parliamentary scrutiny procedure assume great importance. My Amendment 124 seeks to ensure that sufficient information is provided to Parliament. In it, I propose five new subsections that would ensure that Parliament would be able to have a sufficient explanation, an explanation of the consultation, information about representations, and the kind of information that is important when it comes to dealing with an order. Perhaps more importantly, my Amendment 125 seeks to put in place an appropriate parliamentary procedure for scrutiny. My amendment is broadly based on the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 and what is described as a super-affirmative procedure in it. I do not want to repeat what has been said before but that Act is highly relevant to our discussions on this Bill, because it gives extensive powers to Ministers to remove or reduce burdens resulting from legislation, including primary legislation.
I agree with the report of the Delegated Powers Committee when it said that,
“the insertion of a super-affirmative procedure cannot bring a misconceived delegated power within the bounds of acceptability”.
It went on to say:
“A single stage of consultation is clearly no substitute for the detailed scrutiny afforded by the use of a bill (the process by which the functions of many of the bodies listed in this Bill were debated and decided)”.
If we were to continue with the use of this Bill, the committee suggests that,
“the government, not Parliament, would retain the sole ability to make amendments to orders”,
although my noble friend Lord Dubs has tabled an amendment that seeks to create a procedure whereby orders can be amended. I agree with the committee that, if the legislation is rotten to its core, the insertion of a super-affirmative procedure cannot bring it,
“within the bounds of acceptability”.
However, we are trying to solve the conundrum of ensuring that these bodies are reviewed on a regular basis, which we all want. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, talked earlier about the need for a process whereby there can be minor changes; again, that seems eminently sensible. A super-affirmative procedure may be one way in which one can make the Bill more acceptable and certainly give more effective parliamentary scrutiny.
The LRR Act allows for a more extensive parliamentary scrutiny process. Section 12 sets out procedural requirements for making orders. The Minister has to consult on the order, and then lay a draft order and explanatory document before Parliament. The order’s procedure can be a choice of negative, affirmative or super-affirmative. Essentially, the Minister has to recommend, in an explanatory document accompanying the draft order, which parliamentary procedure should apply and his or her reasoning for that. The level of scrutiny recommended should depend on the views of the Minister on the complexity and impact of the order. That may be informed by representations on the proposals received during the consultation process, and the Minister’s recommendation on whether a procedure should be negative, affirmative or super-affirmative shall apply, unless either House of Parliament requires a more onerous procedure.
The key importance of the LRR Act is in the nature of the super-affirmative procedure, because that Act provides for a committee of either House, charged with reporting on the draft order, to recommend that no further proceedings be taken in relation to the draft order, unless that recommendation is rejected by a resolution of the House. It is sometimes known as the veto procedure, although it is clearly not an absolute veto. None the less, it is a pretty powerful mechanism for scrutinising such orders. I should have thought that any Government who were faced with a view of a committee charged with considering the order that it should not go ahead would have to think very seriously about whether they wished to go forward with that order.
My amendment builds on the super-affirmative procedure and gives a number of options for a committee of either House to recommend to either House that the order be approved in its current form, or that it be amended, or that no further proceedings should be taken in relation to the draft order, or that it is more appropriate that it be progressed through primary legislation. My amendment specifies that unless the recommendation is that the order be approved, it cannot be progressed unless the recommendation is rejected by a resolution of the House. If the recommendation is that the order be amended, it may not proceed unless the recommendation is rejected or the House approves the order, as revised by the committee.
I have sought to build on the super-affirmative procedure and include some more flexibility in it. This is one of the key planks to reaching a consensual agreement on the Bill in your Lordships' House. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is bringing some amendments, but they do not go as far as mine. It would be well worth thinking about whether a kind of super-affirmative procedure—if not with my amendment, then, I am sure, in a later amendment—can be provided for. However, the key principle here is that a Select Committee of either House should be able to take an order away, and if that committee decides that it is not appropriate for the order to go forward and that primary legislation might be more appropriate, although it is not an absolute veto, a measure such as this would provide great reassurance to your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I am taking the highly unusual step of intervening briefly at this stage as chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Our latest report on the government amendments, because of the lateness of their tabling, was placed in the Printed Paper Office only this morning. I am grateful to the staff for preparing the document so quickly after our second meeting on the Bill yesterday.
If ever the committee was set up for a Bill, this was the Bill because of its skeletal nature. In our report, our view—as has been stated many times today—was unequivocal: the powers contained in Clauses 1 to 5 and 11 are not appropriate delegations of legislative power, as they would give Ministers of this and future Governments unacceptable discretion to rewrite the statute book, with inadequate parliamentary scrutiny of, and control over, the process. The committee's original report was careful not to recommend any particular course of action for the Government to take to amend the Bill to strengthen parliamentary control—contrary to what the Minister said in his letter to us. However, we set out a range of options, which were to be seen not necessarily as alternatives, as we believed that one or more might prove necessary. One option was for a form of the super-affirmative procedure that has already been enshrined—as we have also heard many times today—in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. The Government have now tabled a form of this procedure. My purpose in speaking now is to address their amendments.
In our report published this morning, we welcomed the government amendments as a step in the right direction, because they enhance parliamentary scrutiny. However, they do not address the fundamental problem that, in the committee's view, the delegated powers in the Bill—the purposes of which are not specified or limited—are not appropriate delegations of legislative power. In other words, although Ministers of this or any future Government must “have regard” to certain matters, they are not constrained by any legislative provisions. This makes the super-affirmative procedure in these amendments very different from the procedure in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006—as other noble Lords pointed out in the earlier debate. In that Act, parliamentary scrutiny is much more effective. For example, if a committee of either House recommends that no further proceedings should be taken on a draft order, any such proceedings are automatically stopped—as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said—until and unless the recommendations are rejected by the House itself in a procedure commonly called the veto. In the super-affirmative procedure of Amendment 118, which the Government are proposing, the Minister need only have regard to any resolution of either House—a very different matter.
I will not list all the differences between the procedures in the 2006 Act and those in the Bill, as they are set out in our sixth report. Of course, there are differences in the two procedures for orders in the Bill, in Clauses 1 to 6 and in Clause 11. I will give one example to illustrate why there could be a problem with the second lot of procedures. Under Clause 11, the Minister may wish to make an order containing proposals for several bodies to be transferred from Schedule 7 to Schedule 1. During consultation, many representations may be made about one body. The Minister may be urged to amend the draft order, but to do so he must go through the whole 30, 40 or 60-day procedure again. This is unlike the procedure for earlier clauses. Rather than holding up the fate of the other bodies in the order for another two or three months, he may decide that, although he has had regard to all the contributions that he has heard, considerations of time override all representations and so he may decide to make the original order after all. It is clear from the Minister's letter to the committee that time is the crucial factor in the way that the Bill has been drafted. I understand that, having announced that there is to be a bonfire of the quangos, the Government want to light the bonfire as soon as possible. However, it is the duty of the committee of which I am chair to make sure that the match is not lit before Parliament has more effective control over the whole process.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, the noble Baroness has made an immensely powerful case and the House is deeply indebted to her and her committee for the work that they have done. Essentially what is being introduced here is what on the continent would be called a decree-making power. There is now a capacity well beyond the usual use of ministerial orders for the Government to legislate by decree. One needs only to look at the scope of the Bill and the headings of Clauses 1 to 6 to see how significant this is. Clause 1 is entitled “Power to abolish”—that is, to abolish wholesale a whole string of organisations listed in the Bill which have been established under a proper statutory procedure. Clause 2 is headed “Power to merge”; Clause 3, “Power to modify constitutional arrangements”; Clause 4, “Power to modify funding arrangements”; Clause 5, “Power to modify or transfer functions”; and Clause 6, “Power to authorise delegation”. This is essentially a wide-ranging, decree-making power which, if the Bill is passed in its current form, Parliament will be conferring on the Executive. This has very significant constitutional implications, and the seriousness with which the House has been addressing the Bill is well merited in this case.
My noble friend’s amendment looks to me to be the minimum necessary to ensure that this decree-making power—because that is what it is—is kept within proper bounds and that there is proper parliamentary scrutiny, including a requirement in each case for the Government not simply to explain their reasons but to explain why they are seeking to reject the expert opinion of a committee of both Houses expressed upon proposals put forward by the Government. It seems to me that this is exceptionally important. The amendment of my noble friend Lord Hunt would require the Government to explain why they are not prepared to accept the reasoning of a committee of either House and, where that committee recommends for good and sufficient reasons that proceedings on an order should not take place, it requires the authority of the two Houses for proceedings then to take place. It is called a super-affirmative procedure and, as always when we are discussing new things, it appears to be a significant enhancement of parliamentary authority. However, looked at another way, conceptually this is putting a proper curb on a decree-making power, which in the opinion of the noble Baroness and her committee is probably one that should in any event be vested in the normal legislative process.
In order to see that the Bill is kept within proper constitutional bounds, I believe that the prerogatives of your Lordships should be respected. A move of this kind is essential or we will be faced with claims that we, as a House, have given the Government a power to legislate by decree without even the capacity for the recommendations of committees of our own House to be properly debated before the Government proceed.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I shall be brief because the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, has said everything that I would have wished to say. I welcome the fact that the Government clearly heard what was said at Second Reading and have taken on board the comments concerning the need for the procedure to be changed so that there is a greater role for Parliament in the process. Therefore, although the Minister has heard, perhaps the problem was that we were not shouting loud enough. I welcome the moves in the right direction and the fact that we now have Amendment 118, but it raises the question of why it was not in the Bill in the first place. However, the amendment goes only so far, for the reasons that we have heard. When one contrasts Amendment 118 with the super-affirmative resolution procedure, it is clear that Amendment 118 diminishes the role of Parliament relative to the super-affirmative resolution procedure, for the reasons that the noble Baroness mentioned. Therefore, I think that the Government should take away this new clause and come back with something that builds in the role of Parliament, akin to the super-affirmative resolution procedure, so that we play the role that we should be playing.
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton, because his point about the role of Parliament is absolutely critical. In a sense, we heard the legal expert, the former Law Lord, discussing earlier today in a learned way the basic thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and I are saying. Ultimately, we are talking about the power of the legislature and the power of the Executive, and it is very important that we pursue the lines set out by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, who explained the matter expertly and lucidly.
I very much welcome government Amendments 173 and 174 because they elaborate and outline in much more detail the orders which follow Clauses 17 and 18, which specifically relate to the forestry commissioners—the individuals. Of course, under these powers the Bill says that the constitutional arrangements of the commissioners can be changed by ministerial edict. That raises an important point because I think we will find that at least one of the commissioners is appointed by Her Majesty. It is interesting to see whether Ministers can take this power simply by an order. I put that in a positive way for Ministers to have a look at.
I am also interested in Amendment 174 because, as I understand it, it inserts a new clause after Clause 18. I seek information from the Minister: does this mean that Clause 19 becomes redundant? Does the second part of government Amendment 174 become the new Clause 19? That appears to be the case, but I would welcome guidance on that. I shall not detain the House any longer.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this group of amendments concerns the central question of parliamentary scrutiny and procedure in relation to the order-making powers in the Bill. This group includes government Amendments 118, 126, 130, 173, 174 and 179. Perhaps I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, that that is exactly what happens. It institutes a parallel framework for those sections of the Bill dealing with the Forestry Commission. The numerical sequence is exactly as he described. Amendment 122, in the name of my noble friend Lord Lester, and Amendments 3B, 120, 124, and 125 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, are also in this group. In this debate, I will discuss in particular government Amendment 118, which relates to orders made under the powers in Clauses 1 to 6. Amendment 130 replicates this amendment in relation to orders made under Clause 11, and Amendments 173 and 174 make a similar provision in relation to the forestry provisions in the Bill.
We also intend to create similar provisions in relation to the powers conferred on Welsh Ministers by Clause 13, and are in discussions with the Welsh Assembly Government about how best to achieve this. As part of this process, I give notice of my intention to oppose the Question that Clauses 10, 12 and 19 stand part, as they are now replaced by the government amendments.
Government Amendment 126 specifies that an order made under Clause 11 may not be included in the same instrument as another order made under the Bill. Government Amendment 179 is a consequential amendment to Clause 28, which defines references to various periods of scrutiny used in earlier government amendments.
In the previous group, I noted the high level of consensus which had emerged regarding the requirement to consult in relation to the powers in this Bill. Similarly, there is much consensus around the idea that Ministers should ensure that Parliament is properly informed about the content and background of orders, through the laying of a draft order accompanied by an explanatory document, detailing the reasoning for the order and including the results of the external consultation which preceded it. In addition, government Amendment 118 requires this document explicitly to address how the matters in Clause 8 had been addressed.
I note that Amendment 124, which is tabled in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, specifies that the explanatory document should include a regulatory impact assessment, and I appreciate the intent behind this addition. The use of impact assessments is set out by the Better Regulation Executive in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Departments are required to assess any policy of a regulatory nature that would affect the private sector, the third sector or public services against the impact assessment framework and are required to publish that assessment when the proposal enters Parliament. On this basis, I do not believe it is necessary to repeat this requirement in the Bill. Similarly, I do not believe it to be appropriate to set out in statute that Ministers should provide other information which they consider will be of assistance to Parliament given the difficulties in definition and the potential breadth of information that that would involve. However, these reservations notwithstanding, I hope that the noble Lords opposite will recognise the shared intent behind our amendments in this area and feel able to support the government amendments in question.
I now turn to the question of parliamentary procedure for orders made under this Bill as discussed, in particular, in Amendment 125 and in government Amendments 118, 130 and 174. At Second Reading, I made a commitment to noble Lords that the Government would produce a parliamentary procedure that will ensure enhanced parliamentary scrutiny. The government amendments I have tabled meet this commitment by giving Parliament the opportunity, within 30 days of the laying of a draft order, to require that an enhanced procedure is required for approval of the order. Parliament will make that decision. This enhanced procedure would require a 60-day period of consideration, rather than the standard 40 days for the affirmative procedure, and for the Minister to have regard to any representations, resolution or recommendation from Parliament in relation to the draft order before seeking approval by a resolution of both Houses. This procedure would give both Houses of Parliament an extended opportunity to scrutinise and comment on these orders, and I hope it provides the reassurance the House is seeking.
Amendment 125, which is tabled in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, would introduce a new parliamentary procedure for these orders, going beyond the extensive super-affirmative procedure described in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 by giving a Committee of either House the opportunity not only to reject an order, but to amend it or to recommend that the proposals be taken forward only through primary legislation. I recognise the sentiment from which this amendment springs, but I cannot support it for a number of reasons.
First, it is my belief that the parliamentary procedure it proposes fundamentally changes the role of Parliament, and of this House in particular, in dealing with secondary legislation. This may be something that many noble Lords would welcome, but it is surely not a debate which should be resolved within the confines of deliberation on the Public Bodies Bill. In this regard, I wish to draw the House’s attention to the initial report on the Bill by the Delegated Powers Committee published on 12 November. The report described the suggestion that orders might be amended as “virtually unprecedented” and highlighted the difficulties inherent in seeking to produce a workable procedure of this nature, particularly in the event that the two Houses disagreed on the content of an order.
Secondly, a comparison to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 is telling. The order-making powers in that Act are far broader in scope than those in this Bill, which are restricted not only to a particular branch of statute—that relating to public bodies—but also to the specific bodies defined in each schedule. Perhaps I may say that I am very grateful for the intervention of the chairman of the Delegated Powers Committee, my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester, and for her contribution to this debate. It has been useful to have direct input from that committee—hot off the press, one might say—and it reinforces the importance of our debate about this procedure. I am also grateful for the acknowledgement that the Government have sought to address the Delegated Powers Committee’s concerns. The DPC’s second report suggests that the inclusion of the super-affirmative procedure in the 2006 Act, and the degree to which Section 2 of that Act is comparable to this Bill, provides a justification for the more restrictive parliamentary procedure. However, given that the super-affirmative procedure provision in the 2006 Act are designed to apply in general to the much wider powers in that Act, I maintain that this would not be a proportionate procedure for the Public Bodies Bill.
To suggest that this Bill requires a more restrictive scrutiny procedure than the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act therefore seems to me to be a somewhat disproportionate response, particularly in the light of the additional safeguards that we have sought to introduce. However, I acknowledge the differing position of the Delegated Powers Committee in this regard. I have listened carefully to the contributions made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, which rather backed up the arguments presented by the committee. I acknowledge the differing position of the Delegated Powers Committee in this regard and will consider this matter further.
The question of disproportionality is none the less raised again by the fact that, under Amendment 125, the proposed procedure would apply to each and every order made under this Bill. As was stated repeatedly at Second Reading, and has continued to be stated to me by many noble Lords since, there is broad agreement for many of the reforms in this Bill. The application of the procedure proposed by the Opposition, particularly in such an inflexible manner, would constitute an excessive hindrance on the reform programme of the Government, as well as requiring significant parliamentary time. Our approach, however, gives Parliament the flexibility to select an enhanced procedure, while maintaining for government the reasonable ability to act to implement its programme.
I finally wish to address the question of this House’s ability to veto statutory instruments made by affirmative procedure. By convention, we do not vote such instruments down, and I know that this is a source of concern from noble Lords who believe that this Bill excludes them from the decision-making process. I can assure the House that this is not the case. The enhanced procedure we have proposed, in conjunction with the additional safeguards and the requirement for consultation, would significantly strengthen the scrutiny of orders under this Bill both inside and outside Parliament. In addition, I would make this point: no body can be subject to the powers under this Bill unless Parliament gives its approval to its inclusion in the schedules.
Many noble Lords have already taken the opportunity, by amendment, to exercise their right to debate the inclusion of particular bodies, and the Government will be held to account in this fashion. Similarly, any new body created following the passage, subject to the will of Parliament, of the Bill could itself only be added to the schedules via primary legislation. The Government are taking the opportunity, in primary legislation, to seek approval from Parliament to make a specific set of bodies subject to a specific set of powers. I believe that the approach we have proposed through the government amendments in the group is both sensible and proportionate, striking a balance between Parliament’s ability to scrutinise and the Executive’s ability to take forward its programme for government. In the light of these comments and in the context of my previously stated commitment to further consider the comments of the Delegated Powers and Scrutiny Committee on matters of procedure, I would ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.
Lord Adonis
The Committee will be extremely grateful to the noble Lord for indicating that he will consider this matter further and we applaud the degree of consultation that he is affording noble Lords. However, when he says that Clauses 1 to 6 confer specific powers on Ministers in respect of specific bodies, while he is clearly right in respect of the specific bodies because they are listed in the schedules, it is very debatable whether the powers are specific. For example, in Clause 3 the power is “to modify constitutional arrangements”. It states:
“A Minister may by order modify the constitutional arrangements of a body or office specified in Schedule 3”.
The clause is not at all specific as to what powers the Government will seek to take. That, it seems to me, is the whole point at stake in this debate. The powers given in Clauses 1 to 6 are extremely wide-ranging; they are not specific. If they were specific, your Lordships would be able to debate them and seek to amend them. So it is precisely for that reason that the fifth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee states in its opening paragraph:
“The Committee considers that the powers contained in clauses 1 to 5 and 11 as they are currently drafted are not appropriate delegations of legislative power. They would grant to Ministers unacceptable discretion to rewrite the statute book, with inadequate parliamentary scrutiny of, and control over, the process”.
That seems to justify entirely the further look at these wide-ranging powers that the noble Lord has promised us, as well as at the case which has been made by many noble Lords for an exceptional parliamentary procedure to deal with an exceptional delegation of power, which this Bill proposes to give to Ministers.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Perhaps I may respond to the noble Lord. I am grateful to him for making the point, which is perfectly valid. It is true that the powers are general in their scope within the context of a constitutional arrangement. It may well be that it will concern changes in governance and so on of a body, or its representation in the case of a body listed in Schedule 3—that is, how the governing bodies are appointed. There could be a number of different aspects. I agree that they will differ and, by necessity, that is why this has been put in the most general of terms.
We would argue that we are indeed trying to construct a special form of scrutiny for the orders that will be tabled under this Bill, and that is what our amendments seek to address. I have accepted that the comments of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published this morning mean that we need to look at this again because we want to try to do this within the context of parliamentary accountability. That is the purpose of seeking to reconsider this matter. I think that I have set out the arguments for why we are where we are and what we are seeking to do with our enhanced procedure for parliamentary scrutiny. However, it is important that whatever we determine here has to be compatible with the procedures of the other House because we would not want ping-pong on statutory instruments. That would be pretty difficult, so we need a process which is capable of operating across Parliament. That is an important consideration of which we are mindful.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his response and for his willingness to have a look at this in the light of our debate. That is very encouraging. I am also grateful to him for the government amendments he has just spoken to, which are an advance on what is currently in the Bill. Again, that is encouraging.
However, the giveaway line in the government amendments is where it is stated that if within 30 days either House decides the order requires further scrutiny, the order cannot be proceeded with until a period of 60 days has elapsed. During that time the Minister “must have regard to” any representations—which, in the end, means that the Minister can disregard as much as he regards. The problem we have is that the government amendments do not go anywhere near the scale of scrutiny we believe is required or as the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, clearly expressed. Crucially, they do not contain the veto option which exists in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, as my noble friend Lord Adonis made clear, and it is that option that immeasurably strengthens parliamentary authority.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said in his letter to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that he believes there is a difference between this Bill and the LRR Act because of what he describes as the more restrictive matter of the Public Bodies Bill. However, as he knows, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has analysed this and believes that the 2006 Act is narrower in at least two respects when compared with the powers contained in the Bill. In his further discussions the Minister might wish to reflect on his and the Select Committee’s views on that.
The Minister also said that my amendment would change the role of Parliament and he prays in aid the first report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published on 12 November. The Select Committee is well able to respond to that but I believe it is a misinterpretation of what the Select Committee report is saying. My reading of it is that after expressing concern about the lack of scrutiny, the Select Committee puts forward a number of ideas for how Parliament might enhance that scrutiny, one of which is the super-affirmative procedure; another is a procedure which would allow Parliament to amend proposed orders under the Bill; and another is a sunset clause. The noble Lord is guilty of putting together the super-affirmative suggestion and the procedure to allow amendments and to pray them in aid in saying that my amendment falls because it would allow for amendments. I am not aware of any wording in my amendment which states that the House can amend the orders. I have built on the super-affirmative procedure contained in the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act. That is why I do not think I am guilty of advancing the powers of Parliament in the way the Minister suggests.
The noble Lord raised the important question of the powers of this House in relation to secondary legislation. He said that, by convention, this House does not vote down statutory instruments. I dispute that interpretation. I refer him to paragraph 10.02 of the Companion which states clearly:
“The House of Lords has only occasionally rejected delegated legislation”.
It then goes on to say:
“The House has resolved ‘That this House affirms its unfettered freedom to vote on any subordinate legislation submitted for its consideration’”.
The Minister may be aware that there has been an interesting discussion between the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the House, and the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments on this very matter.
The question is the extent to which the Leader now accepts the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Conventions chaired by my noble friend Lord Cunningham, which were accepted by your Lordships' House after debate. That committee’s report made it very clear that there were circumstances in which it was perfectly proper for this House to seek to defeat secondary legislation; for example, in relation to a skeletal Bill. I am convinced that it is perfectly proper for this House to seek to defeat any order under this Bill as it is now written.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Perhaps I may take the noble Lord back to that section of my speech which addressed this issue. I was merely making a point of observation. I think that the only statutory instrument to have been voted down in my time in this House was the casinos order. I think that it is reasonable to say that we do not do it. Whether we should is a different issue altogether. My point was that many noble Lords might welcome a debate about that, but it is surely not a question that should be resolved within the confines of deliberation on the Public Bodies Bill. The right place is in the sort of discussions to which the noble Lord referred; it is not this Bill.
Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I do not want to digress too much into academic discussion on conventions, but the fact that we have not done it does not necessarily make it a convention. For many years, MPs did not defeat the Government in the House of Commons, but it was not a convention that MPs did not vote against the Government. Just because we have not gone through with doing this—I have never accepted that there has been a convention—it does not mean that this House is not perfectly free if it wishes to reject secondary legislation. It is not, as is sometimes claimed, a nuclear option; it is a popgun option. It is perfectly open for the Government to come back with a fresh order, so I see no reason why we should not exercise our due powers.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that is a very helpful intervention. The Minister said “by convention”. I am afraid that I interpret that to mean that it is a convention of this House that we do not vote down statutory instruments, which I must refute.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think that I might change my wording to “custom”.
Lord Greaves
Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, might consider that the relevant statistic is the number of occasions on which the House divides on such instruments rather than the number of occasions on which the Division results in their being voted down. It is clear that the House divides on instruments rather more often than it votes them down, largely as a result of this Liberal Democrat group putting matters to the vote in the previous Parliament. The number of such Divisions is not huge, but there has been a handful of them in my recollection rather than none at all. If the House accepts that it can divide, it must accept that it is capable of voting instruments down.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I have certainly noticed the reluctance of the Liberal Democrat Benches to put things to the vote; sometimes, they have to be encouraged to do so, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, found out earlier today.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right that a number of developments have occurred in secondary legislation. Noble Lords have been encouraged sometimes to put down non-fatal Motions, which has been very helpful. Equally, there have been votes on some orders which have been lost. However, I accept what the Minister has said—that is, it is more the custom than the convention.
Notwithstanding the seeming withdrawal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, from what we thought was a consensual agreement in relation to Cunningham, I am clear that this House has every right to vote down an order. I am absolutely certain that, unless this Bill is heavily amended, there will be a series of votes on each organisation and the Government will find themselves in very great difficulty. We agree with the principle, which is why it would have been much better if this Bill had been sent to a Select Committee. Well, we did not win the vote. It would be much better for the Government if they were to accept a super-affirmative procedure along the lines suggested in my amendment. They will find, in the end, that that will be a much more satisfactory way of dealing with these matters than with the implied possibility of each individual order having extensive debate and votes at the end of it.
The Minister has very kindly said that he will consider very carefully the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the debate that we have heard tonight. I believe this to be one of the most important debates in the whole Bill until we get to Schedule 7, Clause 11. That debate clearly ought to be in prime time and it would be right for me to withdraw the amendment; I am sure that we can have good constructive discussions between now and Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Rosser
Lord Rosser
My Lords, this is a Bill that lacks detail and it lacks background information. As we heard at Second Reading and again today, this Bill falls into the surprising category, bearing in mind what it seeks to do, of being a framework Bill. It is through this barebones framework that Parliament is asked, in effect, not to insist on its function of scrutinising amendments to primary legislation. The amendment I am moving on behalf of my noble friends suggests that more information is required before such a move can be contemplated. This is a probing amendment and its purpose, and that of Amendment 180, is to ask the Government to explain what their intentions are about providing necessary information. Our view is that this information should be provided before the Act, and any powers granted under it, come into force. Our Amendment 180 would change the commencement date of the Bill to a date determined in an order made by the Minister, but the amendment also provides that such an order,
“cannot be made unless, at least one month before making the order the Minister has laid before Parliament a statement outlining … how and by whom the functions of the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6 are to be carried out in future; and … the expected costs and liabilities associated with the proposed changes to the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6”.
Clause 30 in the Bill as drafted states that the Bill comes into force,
“at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which it is passed”.
It is unclear why two months are required and again no information has been provided on this point. The amendment we propose provides a flexible timespan so should not present an issue. Such a statement, as called for in the amendment, and provided at least a month before the commencement order, will enable Parliament to consider the issues around the proposed arm’s-length body reform agenda of the Government, and it will provide a much more effective scrutiny role of the actions and decisions of the Executive than is currently provided in the Bill. To put in plainly, it will answer questions about who will be doing what and how; how much is it going to cost; and what will fall through the cracks. Such transparency will benefit both your Lordships’ House and the other place—most particularly in the light of the Minister’s edict earlier this evening that the public bodies in the schedules could not express a view about the impact of the Bill on their functions and activities. It will also increase the understanding of affected persons and the public at large about the Government’s intentions for these bodies, the thinking behind those intentions, and what the impact will be on people’s lives. How else can the Government be held to account without this information?
A further advantage of providing a statement to Parliament covering the issues referred to in Amendment 180 is that such a requirement would help to ensure that Ministers exercise their very considerable powers under the Bill in a responsible and considered way. After all, Ministers should not be tempted to take advantage of the opportunity to make an order under the Bill without first having set out well beforehand the changes and impacts resulting from the decision and the associated liabilities. Ministers should be under no illusion that the powers vested in them through the Bill are to be treated responsibly and should be exercised openly rather than from behind semi-closed doors.
The Government need to be clear about and understand the implications of their public bodies reform agenda, whereas this House needs to be able to test that Ministers have made clear and logical decisions about which functions a body need, or need no longer, carry out. We need to be reassured and satisfied that no functions that are currently being carried out have been overlooked and not considered. Where functions are to be transferred, we need to be satisfied that no conflicts of interest would be created and that the body or person to whom the functions are to be transferred has the competence and the knowledge to undertake that role.
We also need to be sure that a proper and realistic assessment has been made of the costs, savings and liabilities associated with any intended changes to bodies in order to be satisfied that all costs and potential costs, as well as quality-of-service and provision issues, have been properly addressed and assessed. That is particularly relevant where, for example, some 65 per cent of the costs of a non-departmental public body relates to grants that are passed on to other organisations to fund universities, scientific research, skills training, legal aid and other core government functions.
Amendments 4 and 180 would help us to achieve those necessary and important objectives—I stress the word “help”—but they should not be seen in isolation. The Constitution Committee’s report on the Bill states that,
“the Bill vastly extends Ministers’ powers to amend primary legislation by order. Such powers … must be clearly limited, exercisable only for specific purposes, and subject to adequate parliamentary oversight”.
In the view of the committee, the Bill does not meet those tests. As a responsible Opposition who believe in open and accountable government, we have tabled several amendments designed to strengthen the procedure to which the draft orders made under the Bill will be subject before they become law. Those amendments include our proposal for a super-affirmative resolution process and provision for an explanatory note to accompany a draft order when it is laid before Parliament. We foresee that such notes would include more detailed regulatory impact information about the particular proposal, whereas the information in the statement proposed under Amendment 180 would provide a high-level assessment.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Mr Francis Maude, has spoken about the need for greater accountability and transparency in public bodies. He has noted that the existence of what he described as “too many bodies” has,
“meant that elected politicians have been able to avoid making difficult and tough decisions. This is a direct challenge to accountability and is contrary to openness and transparency in public services that this Government seek to achieve”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/10/10; col. 27WS.]
In the light of that Statement, do the Government really intend, as they could under the Bill, to abolish bodies such as Consumer Focus, the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council or the office of the Chief Coroner without a statutory requirement to provide the basis on which the decision has been made? That certainly does not sit well with the words of the Minister for the Cabinet Office about the Government’s goals of greater accountability, transparency and openness.
We agree that transparency and accountability to the public are important, but transparency and accountability should apply not just to arm’s-length bodies but to Ministers and Governments. That will be provided not by Ministers quietly changing functions and operations of public bodies under the current terms of the Bill but by their providing the information that is necessary for the proper scrutiny of those decisions. I hope that, when the Minister responds, he will set out in some detail what information in line with our amendments the Government intend to provide to Parliament to enable it to carry out its role of scrutinising the actions and intentions of the Government that are exercised under the terms of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
I give general support to the general idea behind the amendment. The details of the amendment are probably impractical, but the underlying purpose of moving it as a probing amendment is absolutely vital. It goes to the very heart of why many of us are unhappy about this Bill as it stands at the moment. There has been a lot of talk about procedures and super-affirmatives and all that kind of thing, but the basic problem at the heart of the Bill is that it proposes to put on the statute book a list of organisations which the appropriate Minister will have the power to abolish or merge, or the power to modify their constitutional or funding arrangements, to modify or transfer their functions or to authorise delegation. In some cases, organisations appear on more than one of these lists. That happens in Clauses 1 to 6. I shall ignore Clause 11 and Schedule 7 at the moment, as they give rise to a different issue altogether—a list of organisations that may or may not be added to these other lists in due course. What is to happen to those is all up in the air and all rather a mess.
Clauses 1 to 6 set out the Government’s clear and stated wish to abolish all the organisations in Schedule 1, for example. That is government policy, as we have it so far. If the Government have a policy to abolish this long list of organisations—and I, for one, do not disagree with the abolition of quite a few of them, although I would argue about some of them—there is not just the question of the abolition of the organisation. Abolishing an organisation is a mechanical thing; you close it down and no one is employed by it. The crucial thing that this amendment gets to the very heart of is what will happen to the functions of those organisations. In my judgment, it is far more important that the Government tell us what is to happen to the multifarious functions of those organisations than it is to say that they wish to close them down as bodies or structures. The functions are absolutely crucial.
That is information that in some cases we are being provided with outside the confines of the Bill. We have some ideas about what will happen to the functions of the regional development agencies. We know that some of those functions are being ended and that their planning functions are being closed down altogether; in fact, they have been closed down in most cases already. Some functions will be transferred to local enterprise partnerships if and when they exist everywhere, although they do not yet exist everywhere. Even the regional development agencies have functions that we do not know who will carry out. There is the whole question of rural development and its funding, and two or three weeks ago I put down a Written Question on that matter. The answer, in effect, was that it had not been sorted out yet, that for the time being it would continue to happen through the RDAs but that sooner or later it would be transferred to someone else. The assumption is that it will be transferred to someone at the centre, but no one really knows. Even with bodies like RDAs, where quite a lot of work has been done and documents and White Papers have been published, we still do not know at all what will happen to the functions. With many organisations, we do not have a clue. It seems that this is the fundamental problem that the Government have with the Bill.
Later we will discuss amendments that would delete almost every organisation in Schedules 1 and 2, right through to Schedule 6 and the infamous Schedule 7. It will take a huge amount of this Committee’s time to go through these and try to prise out of the Government what they propose to do. I suspect that many of these amendments have been tabled not to delete the organisation from the list but to find out what the Government’s intentions are for the existing functions of each of those bodies. Which are to be closed down, which are to be transferred to other outside bodies and which are to be brought in-house within departments? Who knows what will happen to some of them? That is the crucial thing. It is what these bodies do that matters, not their structure, unless you work there and your job is on the line.
Therefore, this amendment is fundamental in that it gets to the very heart of one of the main problems with the Bill. We simply have not been provided with information by the Government as to what is to happen to each of these bodies. As I say, the time to provide that information is not, as set out in the Bill, after Royal Assent and before commencement. The time to provide that information is now, to this House and then to the House of Commons, so that we can be absolutely certain when we consent—if that is what we do—to the different organisations being in one or more of these lists of how the services and functions that they provide will continue.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I very much agree with the purpose of Amendment 180. It is of fundamental importance that the purposes of the making of the order are fully understood in respect of the transfer of functions. It is more than desirable; it is inevitable and necessary that if the changes are being made to procure efficiency, economy or accountability, it should be possible to judge whether those goals are being achieved by the transfer of authority or the winding up of the body. I know that, in respect of the regional development agencies—notwithstanding the announcement of the LEPs—there is a great deal of uncertainty, for example in respect of the distribution of the European rural development fund, which has not been resolved. It has been suggested that this may be transferred to another body. It has been suggested that it might be transferred to a privatised body, perhaps even consisting of existing members of the RDAs, which have been responsible for this for some time. We have no idea how this will be handled. That is not satisfactory. It is a reasonable objective that the Bill should make this clear, for the reasons already given in this debate. The language of the amendment might not be absolutely suited to bringing this out; none the less, I hope the Minister will give serious thought to that requirement of transparency.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, I support this amendment and I agree very much with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Maclennan. Amendment 180 is much needed if we are to have a rational and sensible process for deciding how we deal with public bodies. I return to the example of economic development. This is a classic case of a decision to abolish a body being taken without anyone thinking about what to do with its functions, what the costs and economic disbenefits are likely to be, and what will happen to the liabilities and assets.
The fact is that none of these questions was answered before the Government announced this decision. They are trying to make it up as they go along. That is not satisfactory. I know about this because of my interest as chair of Cumbria Vision. It is a very sad thing to see because the rhetoric is all about localism and setting up local economic partnerships that are supposed to be more local than the regional development agencies but the Government are devolving very few, if any, functions to the local economic partnerships. What is actually happening is that most of the things that were done in the regions are being centralised into government departments. Is that really sensible public policy-making? Should not the Government have been subject to the discipline embodied in this amendment in terms of explaining clearly what they were doing when they announced this decision?
As regards expected costs and their impact, I put down a Written Question to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, in which I asked for information on costs, how many people were likely to lose their job and what the impact on this, that and the other would be. I received the Answer that no such information was available or was being sought, or something like that. That is not a satisfactory due process. The Government must do better than that as regards other bodies. That is why these amendments being put forward from this side of the House are so important. I hope that they will draw support from all sides of the House.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, Amendments 4 and 180 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, which were introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, seek to introduce a requirement for the Secretary of State to make a statement to Parliament setting out how the functions of all the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6 would be carried out in the future, and the expected costs and liabilities associated with the proposed changes to bodies listed in those schedules. This statement could then be followed, after one month, with a statutory instrument that would commence the Act.
It is right and proper that, before approving a specific change to a particular body or office, the House should have access to appropriate information on that change, including information relating to functions and costs. I support the spirit in which I believe this amendment is tabled. However, I do not believe that it is required. As has been discussed at length in earlier debates today, it is a shared intention of the Committee that, when laying a draft order under the powers in the Bill, Ministers will publish an explanatory document setting out the reasons for making the order. Indeed, one glance at government Amendment 118 makes clear the detail that will be required to accompany a draft order. Orders at this stage will also have gone through the impact assessment process, and this impact assessment will be published at the time the order enters Parliament, in line with existing practice. I am therefore confident that existing requirements will ensure that Parliament is fully informed on the content and implications of orders before being asked to approve them.
I do not believe it to be appropriate to amend the Bill in this fashion; I believe that it would add limited value to the process and would, in so doing, risk an unnecessary delay to the reform programme that the Bill seeks to enable. Therefore, while I appreciate the intention of the amendment, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
I wonder whether my noble friend would consider the possibility, if not of accepting the amendment in this form, of some expansion of Amendment 118, to which he specifically referred, to enable the matters under discussion to be considered as part of the explanatory documents. Explanatory documents have always varied in quality and content, and it makes sense that these specific pieces of information should be given and that there is a standard for performance in respect to that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
As noble Lords will know, an amendment follows on from this that concerns functions—not this evening, I hasten to add; this is just a trailer for Monday—so we will look at another amendment that reinforces the message of this amendment and the intervention by my noble friend Lord Maclennan.
We do not intend to hide anything but there is a difference between presenting a statement covering the whole Bill before the Bill is implemented, and explanatory documents giving full information each time a statutory instrument is laid. The Government take the view that that is the focus that Parliament requires, and that to seek to provide a comprehensive review of all reforms in the Bill before it can be enacted would be an unnecessary delay, and not necessarily a particularly precise operation. That is why I suggested to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that he withdraw his amendment.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response, and other noble Lords who have participated in this brief debate. During it, reference was made to difficulties in obtaining the kind of information sought under the terms of the amendment. Yet that is presumably information that the Government have already, or how were decisions made on which bodies it would be advantageous to place in Schedules 1 to 6 if some decisions had not already been made as to whether their functions needed to be continued in future, or whether their functions could be placed better elsewhere and what the costs would be? There is some difficulty in accepting that the Government do not already have the information sought in the amendment.
One argument that the Minister just put forward was that there would be delay to the programme, but surely that should not be the primary consideration. The primary consideration should be providing the information necessary for this House to make decisions on what the Government intend to do, to scrutinise those actions and to query them. In the light of what the Minister said, it is clear that his motive is not to provide this House with sufficient information in good time to make reasoned judgments; his only consideration appears to be to get through his programme as quickly as possible. An open, transparent and accountable Government need to declare their hand, thinking and reasoning before the Bill comes into force, to ensure proper time for debate based on considered statements by the Government setting out which functions of which bodies will go, which functions will be transferred and to whom, how they will be carried out in future and the costs involved.
I am sorry that the Minister has not been prepared to go further. As I said, I believe that the Government already have much of this information, and the concern is that when the information is provided it will not be in sufficient time for proper debate and consideration before the Government seek to push the order through Parliament. I am disappointed with the Minister’s reply. He could have gone further; he has been urged to. I hope that he will reflect on the matter; I certainly will. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.